• Contrary to what DARE might have taught you, marijuana is not considered a substantial gateway drug, with the best evidence being limited in nature, and with most marijuana users not going on to use other drugs. (Source) Yeah learn all that DARE BS.
• You were probably taught at some point that we’d never be able to map out the entire human genome due to its complexity. However, in 2003, we documented the first 92%, and in 2022 we documented the remaining 8%. (Source) nope I was told we will map it soon
• This one got shared by school nurses all around, but did you know that you shouldn’t tilt your head back if you have a nosebleed? This could cause you to choke or vomit as a result of blood going back into your throat, or - more severely - trigger a vomiting reflex and cause inadvertent harm. (Source) Nope but my mom is a doctor so I leaned from a lot from her
• You were probably taught at some point that people in the time of Christopher Columbus all thought the world was flat. However, this is a myth that pervades history - most people knew the earth was a globe! (Source) Yup
• On the topic of Christopher Columbus, you might’ve been taught that he was a pretty upstanding guy, or at minimum just that he was average in terms of morality. Take a second to Google his relationship to slavery and genocide. (Source) EHHH kind of, we talk briefly about him mass cutting off people hands and enslaveing people.
• A common myth that gets thrown around a lot in health classes is that cracking your knuckles can cause arthritis. This, as it turns out, isn’t true - it’s perfectly safe to crack your knuckles as much as you’d like. (Source) Heard that in school mom said it was wrong, I heard both the myth and the fact
• The original food pyramid was introduced in 1992, and seemed to imply that there were different tiers of ‘importance’ to what food you ate. Since changed in 2011, this was deemed an inaccurate and potentially harmful way to view food intake. Food is food after all! (Source) Nope never learned that there where tiers of food each part is good for you
• A fun fact about taste for you - there is actually no such thing as a ‘taste map,’ or the idea that different areas of the tongue result in you tasting different things. At most, there’s just different regions of sensitivity to taste! (Source) Nopw, saw taste map never learned that it was supposed to show where you taste things
• You’ve no doubt heard of this myth, perhaps not just from school - the idea that we only use 10% of our brains. This isn’t true - we use all parts of our brains, just at different times since each neural location has a specific purpose! (Source) Yeah heard that
• Another common myth is the idea that Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb. He was in fact not the inventor, just someone who helped to optimize its efficiency. (Source) yeah heard that
• There’s a good chance when you were younger, you heard classical music in the classroom to try and make you smarter. However, this is a myth - there is no such link between music and intelligence (or that we can measure intelligence for another matter!) (Source) Yeah heard that
• You’ve probably heard a lot about Thanksgiving being a supposedly peaceful gathering among Pilgrims and Indigenous Americans, but this is actually a myth - it led to a bloodbath brought on by colonial settlers. (Source) Yup heard that.
Honestly I don't recall my schools ever having a "school nurse". I assume most of the teachers were trained in first aid. I went to school in Ontario. Are school nurses an American thing?
Just FYI. Thanksgiving is the original blatant Cultural Appropriation. Thanksgiving was one of 13 harvest feast that the Native Americans in the area would hold each year. That’s one of the reasons that Canada and The US celebrate it on different days.
We also stole most of their constitution, except the bit about “no law shall be passed that doesn’t directly benefit all the children of the next 7 generations.”
They had existed relatively stabley for 25,000 years, and we fucked it up, stole what we wanted, and trashed the rest.
This is just more misinformation, actually. Thanksgiving festivals were common in Europe before the colonization of America. See Lammas and Horkey. The settlers just continued their traditions in America. The native Americans had similar traditions, but the idea wasn’t anything new to Europeans. Canada’s Thanksgiving has moved around a lot over the years, but its current day was chosen to separate it from Remembrance Day. Its timing has nothing to do with Native holidays.
I don’t who “they” are to really respond to the rest of your comment. You’re kind of painting the Indians with an extremely broad brush. Almost nothing will be true about all the cultures of an entire continent. The Pilgrims primarily interacted with the Wampanoags, but they didn’t have a written language and there’s certainly no evidence their tribe existed for 25,000 years.
There’s a common belief among the Iroquois that it should be considered how actions will affect the seventh generation, but the idea that that’s in their constitution is a common myth. The Iroquois Confederacy itself was only formed about 1450. If you read the Great Law of Peace, it bears no resemblance to the US Constitution. Calling it plagiarism is ridiculous. There are not even any significant references to the Iroquois by Congress in the 1780s. This is another modern myth which originated in the last hundred years. The Iroquois constitution wasn’t even written for a democracy.
Cool concept but your site really needs some work done. I heard in school that lemmings would kill themselves and i went in the 2010s. This is only one such example, the best thing you could have done is map out which myths are most common where instead of the decade, and it would also be useful to add a important corrections list for the more important facts which you probably were misinformed about.
Pretty cool site. I like that you’ve included sources for most of the points. I was aware of the 2000’s falsehoods, but I’m sure there are many who aren’t!
Thanks! I’m hoping to update it with some more obscure ones, but I think the fact that I had a little bit of trouble finding true myths is a good thing haha
When talking about my son, I say took their life, or died by suicide. The phrase committed suicide diminishes the loss/act/cry for help by criminalizing it.
Alternately my best friend I say lost his battle with depression. I think the current internet self censored version of unalived is acceptable as well. I for sure would not be offended if someone asked if that is how my son died anyway.
ETA: any plans to make a mobile version? I am going to go dig out my iPad so I can read the list, my old eyes cannot see everything on my phone.
I’m sorry for your loss, thanks for sharing. Made the corrections to the page.
I’ve heard the page doesn’t work on mobile phones very well, its hard for me to test since it works decently on mine but I think I know a fix I can add in a bit
I strongly debated on including school based myths, but wasn’t sure how to go about researching. I’ll do some digging and see if I can’t make an update
Southern schooled in 80s & 90s, here. They let us believe John Wilkes Booth was a lone actor and not part of an organized plot by southern men to assassinate the president.
The first time one of my northern friends mentioned that bit about a conspiracy, my little naive mind was rocked that schools might bend or bury the truth.
The rest of the list was pretty accurate. Except nurses in schools was a Hollywood myth to me. There was no budget for such positions. We could go to the school office and ask to call our parents if we weren’t feeling well, and we’d better be feeling pretty awful.
Android. I tried a couple of browsers. When i look very closely now i see a tiny little rectangle that i can click on and it brings up the decade options
There’s a good chance when you were younger, you heard classical music in the classroom to try and make you smarter. However, this is a myth - there is no such link between music and intelligence (or that we can measure intelligence for another matter!)
I’ve never heard anyone claim classical music makes you smarter. I have heard people say it makes you focus better, which is true to some extent. This was one of the first things my therapist recommended I try after being diagnosed with adhd. I can’t imagine it isn’t applicable to people without adhd, although probably to varying degrees depending on the person.
The only thing I take issue with is the specification of classical music. Some people have told me this is because classical music doesn’t have words in it, which would distract you instead of help you focus. Not only can classical music have lyrics, but every other genre of music is perfectly capable of not having lyrics. I’m not sure if its even true that the lyrics would distract you in the first place.
Its pretty clear to me that the only reason people play classical music specifically for this purpose is because it makes them feel smart. You could argue that feeling smart might actually help you get things done, but I dislike the perception of classical music as smart people music in general. It’s just a style of music, like every other. There’s nothing that makes it superior or more sophisticated, its just what Europeans liked a few centuries ago.
I guess its more prevelant than I thought, or at least it used to be. Its very confusing to me how people could fall for that. How little do you have to know about music to think a specific type of it will literally increase your intelligence.
I don’t think it’s completely ridiculous on its face. Obviously we have some connection to music (as in, we like rhythms, we like making specific sounds with instruments or our voices, we seem to get into the beat etc.), so why shouldn’t it be possible for music known for its complexity to have an effect on us?
It seems it doesn’t, but I don’t think it’s something where you know so “little” about music if you consider it a possibility.
Huh the Thanksgiving one I was taught that the Indians were nice to the new arrivals, but within a few short years that niceness was exploited and betrayed.
I guess maybe the welcome feast never occurred? But we certainly were taught the pilgrims drove the Indians out
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