Correct pronunciation of helicopter was “he-lee-oh-copter” because saying “hell” was evil and God didn’t like it.
Blacks didn’t need education because all they were good for was to work as maids, yard boys, etc.
Different teachers, small town Texas in 1940s & 1950s.
Too many to name. A few of the more memorable ones:
Black people are immune to malaria, which is why they made such good slaves. (Eighth grade social studies teacher.)
Germany couldn’t have had a navy during WWI or WWII because it has no seacoast. (Same teacher as above.)
Smoking one cigarette once in your life does as much damage to your lungs as smoking two packs a day for twenty years. (Seventh grade science teacher.)
The speed of sound in solids and liquids is always slower than the speed of sound in air. (High school physics teacher.)
There are thousands of Vietnam veterans living on an island off the coast of Australia. They contracted an untreatable STD called “black syphilis” while in-country and were too ashamed to go home, so they agreed to be secretly interned there until they die. (High school health and human sexuality teacher)
Pluto is never closer to the sun than Neptune. (Fifth grade teacher who mocked me in front of the class for saying otherwise).
Vermont was one of the original thirteen colonies. (Seventh grade long-term substitute teacher in social studies)
We are going to run out of oil by the year 2000 at the latest, and after than people will drive nuclear-powered cars. Also, every home will have a nuclear reactor in the back yard to provide electricity. (High school chemistry teacher).
Then there was the fifth grade reading teacher who thought he could detect lies with 100% accuracy by looking intently into his students’ eyes. He tried it on me twice that I recall with 0% accuracy (once failing to detect my lie, and once claiming I was lying when I was telling the truth).
“AIDS is a food transmitted disease.” Ninth grade health teacher, ca. 1983. After many arguments, I finally raised my hand and asked “Where have you been eating?” Mrs. M didn’t budge, but my classmate Tim literally fell out of his chair laughing.
This one reminds me: In grade school we had a program called: “Operation Awareness” where they teach you about the evils of drugs. I remember them telling us just one hit/dose and you can become addicted!
This isn’t true for any fucking drug. Except for maybe chocolate.
Well, they can’t exactly tell you the real truth: Just one hit, and you might discover that you really, really like it. Because drugs are pretty awesome.
Another one.
My 90s I.T. textbook claimed that by 2015, computer memory capacity will have gotten so large, we’d never have to think about.
“The hand you write with is your right hand!” Sure, it was true for everybody else in the class, but thirty-five years later and I still can’t reliably say which is which without thinking about it.
When I think about all those terrible grades I got in penmanship and gym and how serious the teachers were about the fact that I wouldn’t get far in life because of it … I mean, I didn’t get far in life, but it’s not because I can’t do a pull-up, and my handwriting is considered by most to be quite neat these days.
In seventh grade, everybody was required to take half a semester of wood shop. The teacher, who was female, once told me that I wouldn’t need to know much beyond how to make that wall sconce because by the time I had a house to fix I’d also have a husband.
“Good girls don’t have sex before marriage.”
“You’ll never amount to anything”
The biggest lie was that school would be fun.
We will only need to work three days a week.
That childhood is the best part of life. Wow, were they wrong about that, and it’s hard to believe that anyone thinks that. Childhood sucked (even though I had great and loving parents), and adulthood is awesome.
The Pilgrims were these poor innocent people who had been discriminated against and banished from England.
The whole “First Thanksgiving” thing.
The “White Devils” and all the terrible things they’d done. No mention of warring Native American tribes, African’s selling their own people into slavery, or freed slaves owning slaves themselves.
People from the Middle East are called “Ay-rabs” according to my 5th grade History teacher in the first year of the 21st century.:smack:
Women will hurt their “lady parts” if they pick up heavy objects.
Having sex ONE time will make a woman pregnant 100% of the time. No mention of BC was made, ever. Only condoms, and those were made to sound nasty and deviant for some reason. No, this wasn’t a religious school.
During 9/11, my 5th grade teacher thought a DESK would save us from the planes/missiles/bombs that were surely going to hit Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. :rolleyes:
My nephew’s daughter (yeah, there’s probably a name for that) is all excited about going to kindergarten. Like really all worked up, excited.
I was talking to her about all the cool things she’d be doing, all the adventures she’d experience, etc.
But I tempered that by also pointing out that it was allllll downhill after kindergarten.
That she loved me, and we would be together forever.
You had Mary Kay Letourneau for homeroom?
Carbon Dioxide is lighter than air. It must be because it is a part of air. Was “taught” this in elementary school and I was supremely pissed when the teacher didn’t believe me when I corrected her (I was a nerd from a very early age).
I felt betrayed when I discovered that electrons don’t whiz around nuclei in tidy little shells.
0.o
I guess you’re not at the creaking aching joints phase yet of adulthood
Maybe this isn’t so much a “lie” by a teacher as it is starting from basic blocks. You can’t teach schoolkids the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle early; that’s just confusing; it’s better to first have them believe that electrons are in neat orbits before moving on to the advanced stuff.
Yeah, but that moment when you’ve passed three quizzes and a test, and then your teacher looks at you all for a full minute, sighs deeply, and says, “So, all that stuff we’ve learned so far? That’s not actually how it is at all…”
:dubious:
Trust issues.