# Myths you were taught in school **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 12, 2005, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952 "2005-10-12T20:15:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/141 "2005-10-15T01:38:11Z")
> [@MLS](#): > > I have been told, but have no cite, that the beer and hard cider was not as high in alcohol as what we drink today, but this may be fallacious. That is correct, at least as far as beer goes. Lower original gravity, lower final alcohol content. It wasn’t light beer by any means, but not malt liquor either. _[Small beer](http://www.realbeer.com/library/beerbreak/archives/beerbreak0320.php)_ had even lower alcohol. Cider would be higher because of the greater amount of fermentable sugars. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 1:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/142 "2005-10-15T01:41:24Z")
> [@Mississippienne](#): > > Another college professor said Alexander the Great died of an arrow wound. Not so! He died of an illness, possibly malaria. She also said Alexander’s only child was a girl, which isn’t true either – his posthumous son was also named Alexander, and was killed by Cassander when he was in his early teens. There is an idea floating around now, that he could have survived except for his “medication”. He (they suspect) was taking hellebore as a cure, and being impatient, kept upping the dosage until its toxic nature finished him. So, he may have been just another Darwin Award. What I learned: Columbus discovered America - so what about Norsemen, hunters from Asia crossing a land bridge, and who know who else? People in Columbus’ time thought the earth was flat - not so, that idea was invented much later, as any decent sailor already knew better. Straight posture meant a ramrod stiff spine - fortunately, I ignored it. Eating huge amounts of food is healthy - Italian background sure shows there (but that’s family, not school - school had some sort of food pyramid nonsense). Hiding under the desk will protect you from a nuclear strike - uh sure The Normans were French - No, they were Danes who had “moved” to France and might have taken it over, given the opportunity The Spanish misions were kind and benevolent, and “saved” the heathens - saved them for forced labor that is. The Civil War was all about ending slavery - No, it was all about power and that’s it, at the simplest level. Two nukes were dropped on Japan because they refused to surrender (too evil to quit I suppose?). > [@MrDantsyPants](#): > > please tell me you’re a citing some bad teaching here. Electricity travels through the entire body of the wire. > > Common sense, two years of university physics, and current manufacturing practices all convince me that this is absolutely true. I’m gonna need a very good cite to convince me otherwise. It depends. Is it DC or AC? If AC, it depends on the frequency. At the high ends of radio frequency, you start to see a skin effect. I are a electrical engginear 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![NinjaChick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@NinjaChick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinjaChick)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/143 "2005-10-15T02:12:20Z")
Up through my senior year of high school, we were being taught that Columbus “helped popularize” the idea that the Earth was round. :rolleyes: The Civil War was, of course, about slavery, and Lincoln was a wonderful, flawless leader who everyone adored. Jews were the only victims in the Holocaust. Plato was the first person to understand what caused shadows. He also thought that democracy was the best form of government. “Politics” is etymologically derived from the Latin for “many tickets”. Shy people just need people to talk to them more, and they’ll grow out of it. :mad: Not exactly a myth, but a teacher once told me in fourth grade that asking questions wasn’t a good way to learn: you should just sit and listen to your teacher, accept what they tell you, and assume that that’s all you need to know. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/144 "2005-10-15T02:20:50Z")
> [@NinjaChick](#): > > “Politics” is etymologically derived from the Latin for “many tickets”. Correct derivation: “poly = many.” “tics = blood-sucking insects.” 😃 ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/145 "2005-10-15T02:31:57Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Correct derivation: “poly = many.” “tics = blood-sucking insects.” 😃 I like that. Another school fallacy: There is no such thing as a stupid question. ---
**Author:** ![WVBrady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/74df32/32.png) [@WVBrady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WVBrady)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 3:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/146 "2005-10-15T03:06:22Z")
> [@GrahamWellington](#): > > … people that don’t do so well in school are looked down on and end up with low quality lives and basically being societies niggers … Can’t convince me of that. I think they just go into management! 😃 Brady ---
**Author:** ![WVBrady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/74df32/32.png) [@WVBrady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WVBrady)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/147 "2005-10-15T03:11:41Z")
> [@aamco](#): > > That we evolved from apes. 😛 I can think of some that **devolved**. 😃 Brady ---
**Author:** ![WVBrady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/74df32/32.png) [@WVBrady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WVBrady)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/148 "2005-10-15T03:17:47Z")
> [@Millit the Frail](#): > > “The **Genius** Book of World Records.” If that’s not right, why do I feel so much smarter after a couple of bottles of Guiness? :rolleyes: Brady ---
**Author:** ![cerberus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@cerberus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cerberus)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/149 "2005-10-15T03:27:13Z")
What a great idea for a [book.](http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/liesmyteachertoldme/liesmyteacher.html) ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/150 "2005-10-15T03:35:59Z")
> [@SteveG1](#): > > There is an idea floating around now, that he could have survived except for his “medication”. He (they suspect) was taking hellebore as a cure, and being impatient, kept upping the dosage until its toxic nature finished him. So, he may have been just another Darwin Award. There is also the not enormously implausible possibility he was slowly poisoned. There was certainly motive and opportunity, the methods of doing so in wine were reasonably well known and the semi-vague symptoms we know of could certainly have fit. > [@](#): > > The Normans were French - No, they were Danes who had “moved” to France and might have taken it over, given the opportunity. Well, to be fair they seem to have lost their northern identity very quickly - like within two-three generations at the most. > [@](#): > > The Civil War was all about ending slavery - No, it was all about power and that’s it, at the simplest level. Mostly yes but with qualification - it wasn’t about ending slavery to be sure. But at the simplest level it _was_ about slavery, from whence came the struggle over power ;). > [@NinjaChick](#): > > The Civil War was, of course, about slavery, And in fact it was :). **SteveG1** is absolutely correct that the war wasn’t about freeing the slaves ( except for a relative handful of abolitionist politicians ). But the war was about slavery - that was the driving background issue that created the regional strife and political conflict. This is one of those odd issues that has received corrective revisionism only to wander too far in the opposite direction. Many very well-educated people now correctly scoff at the old patriotic myth that the war was about the Union and Lincoln seeking to free the slaves. But they then take it a step too far by erroneously stating that slavery was a minor or non-issue in the outbreak of the Civil War. Nope. It was THE issue. Just not in its mythologized form. At least IMHO. To be fair ( again and this time with reluctance 😉 ) this has been argued several times on this board. But those who disagree with me are wrong :). IMHO :p. - Tamerlane ---
**Author:** ![Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/13edae/32.png) [@Stranger\_On\_A\_Train](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stranger_On_A_Train)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/151 "2005-10-15T03:40:09Z")
> [@jrfranchi](#): > > However the issue of slavery and allowing more slave states is what pushed the South to rebellion, if they couldn’t maintain slavery in the USA, they would leave the USA to maintain slavery. So in many ways the simplistic “South wanted to keep enslaving fellow men and the North didn’t” is basically true. True, but still misleading; that so many people who were nominally opposed to slavery were complicit in it for so long (even after the war was well and underway) demonstrates much about politics and the relativism of political value judgements that people–especially those who believe everything they hear on Fox News _or_ All Things Considered–don’t grasp. > [@jrfranchi](#): > > I would say the gray coats were defending the bad guys even if they weren’t bad themselves and the Blue Coat conscripts were at least following a leadership that wanted to abolish slavery and maintain the Union. I would say that counts as the good guys. But it was more complex than “good guys” and “bad guys”, just as in today’s world it is more complex than “The Coalition Against Terror” and “The Axis of Evil”. The motives of the North were not so clean and pure as textbooks would have you believe–the application of trade tariffs was indeed an attempt to keep the Southern states nonindustrialized and relatively impoverished to the benefit of the North–and the resistance of the South to abolition–while ethically unjustifiable from our perspective–was based upon a common belief in the economic necessity of slavery. We make those same rationalizations today, and for the same reasons. Without an understanding of what happened then, we can’t make the connection and learn the lesson now. > [@jrfranchi](#): > > Yes I am well aware that the average conscript didn’t really give a fart about slavery but at least the Union leadership did. Grant’s wife owned a slave. Lee, on the other hand, never owned slaves and was philosophically opposed to slavery. “Leadership” sometimes doesn’t equal agreement, but rather complicity to the mean. The American Civil War was a pivotal moment, not only in American history but also, as it turns out, in world history, and is in some ways a battle that was never fully completed; a political (not just cultural) schism exists even today between the South and the rest of the nation in a way that was never true of any other region. It also represented the last (and worst) major conflict over trade slavery. To diminish it a simple “Blue vs. Grey” paradigm is to ignore an important and bloody lesson–that even democracies, lead by wise people and with the best of intentions–can and do fail to live up to even modest ethical standards and engage in needless conflict when their interests are unclear or conflicted. We could do with some of that lesson today. Stranger ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 3:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/152 "2005-10-15T03:43:46Z")
Oh and just to stay on topic - my sixth grade substitute teacher ( also an actor in the summer - I remember seeing him in an old gum commercial playing a butler ) declared that miscegenation was wrong because blacks were spreaders of sickle-cell anemia. I guess he conveniently forgot or never knew that the trait is also found in some Mediterranean European sub-populations as well. - Tamerlane ---
**Author:** ![WVBrady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/74df32/32.png) [@WVBrady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WVBrady)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/153 "2005-10-15T03:44:20Z")
> [@Princhester](#): > > That electrial wires are multi stranded because the electricity flows on the surface, and so lots of thin wires carry more than one thick wire. Actually, there is a germ of truth to that. It becomes more evident at higher frequencies and is called the “skin effect”. Of course the most common reason for multistranded conductors in normal usage is for increased flexibility, which is why I was dumbfounded to discover that the electrical cable that connected to my VW Rabbit shoulder harness latch and ran through the door was **solid copper!**. It broke when I was getting ready to come home from skiing, with darkness upon me and a strong wind blowing the snow sideways across the otherwise deserted parking lot. Fortunately, I had read about this (thank you, Consumer Reports!), found the break, skinned the insulation off and completed the connection, allowing my engine to start. \*\* German engineering, indeed!\*\* :mad: Brady ---
**Author:** ![Tamerlane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tamerlane/32/7602_2.png) [@Tamerlane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tamerlane)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/154 "2005-10-15T03:47:29Z")
Ah, and I see skimming this thread caused me to miss **jfranchi** making more or less the same point I just did. Oops. - Tamerlane ---
**Author:** ![WVBrady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/74df32/32.png) [@WVBrady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WVBrady)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/155 "2005-10-15T03:54:36Z")
> [@Spectre of Pithecanthropus](#): > > It’s been years since I saw it, but I believe _Roots_ agrees with you: Kunte Kinte was captured first by African slavers, who later sold him to the white men (IIRC). I saw a program on (I think) the History Channel on the subject of the procurement of slaves from the west coast of Africa. I missed the first part, so I am not sure of which country it was, but the African woman leading the tour was speaking French. The slaves were brought in chains from as far away as several hundred miles. They were brought in by other black Africans who had captured them in battles. She said that the city was run by a black African king, and that the white slave traders were subservient to him. She said that black tourists, especially Americans, were greatly distressed by this news, the first time that they had ever heard this. Typically the women would cry and the men would beat their fists on the walls in frustration. Brady ---
**Author:** ![WVBrady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/74df32/32.png) [@WVBrady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WVBrady)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/156 "2005-10-15T04:04:15Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > I learned not to trust my grammar-school science teachers, who obviously had no idea what they were talking about: > 1.) Robins have red breasts because their blood shows through their skin! I was taught that his chest was burned when he saved the chariot that towed the sun across the sky, when some punk kid stole it. Brady ---
**Author:** ![WVBrady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/74df32/32.png) [@WVBrady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WVBrady)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/157 "2005-10-15T04:23:30Z")
> [@Giant\_Spongess](#): > > That is, in fact, wrong. Blood is red whether or not it’s oxygenated. BUT, all of my school textbooks showed the venous (oxygen-depeted) blood as blue. I did a survey of the people where I worked (almost all college graduates) and they all thought that blood was as blue as ink! Maybe the ones who had given blood had never been brave enough to watch their life’s blood draining away from them (does sound kind of scary, doesn’t it?). I have painted several cars and trucks, and I would say that the dark blood is red with a bluish component. I think if a painter was trying to match that hue, it would probably involve including some blue pigment. I once repainted a VW with “cashmere white”. I watched as the guy gave it a tiny squirt of **black.** 😃 Matched perfectly. Brady ---
**Author:** ![Foaming\_Cleanser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f05b48/32.png) [@Foaming\_Cleanser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Foaming_Cleanser)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/158 "2005-10-15T04:26:38Z")
> [@cerberus](#): > > What a great idea for a [book.](http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/liesmyteachertoldme/liesmyteacher.html) So much for fighting ignorance: > [@](#): > > Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong > > James Loewen spent two years at the Smithsonian Institute surveying twelve leading high school textbooks of American History. After two years, you’d think he’d know the name of the place, or at least have the blurb corrected. ---
**Author:** ![WVBrady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/74df32/32.png) [@WVBrady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WVBrady)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/159 "2005-10-15T04:31:09Z")
> [@The Chao Goes Mu](#): > > That Germans would never eat corn on the cob because that’s what pigs eat. Maybe not the Germans, but when my sister lived in Alaska, they had some sort of dinner for visiting Russian pilots (her husband is a pilot). Corn on the cob is expensive in Alaska, because it has to shipped in, and my sister was proud of the fact that she was able to get some. The Russians were very impressed with the size of the houses and the fact that they had steak to eat, but remarked that “corn is what we feed the horses”. Brady ---
**Author:** ![WVBrady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/74df32/32.png) [@WVBrady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/WVBrady)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2005, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952/160 "2005-10-15T04:46:32Z")
> [@JerH](#): > > I had a substitute teacher in 3rd grade who told us Hawaii was located in the Carribean. I believe it! I once mentioned to a friend of mine that a lot of people thought that WVa was still part of the same state as Va. He told me: “If you think that is bad, a lot of people think Hawaii is somewhere down in the Caribbean”. WVBrady [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/myths-you-were-taught-in-school/325952.md?page=9)