Things you learned in school that are no longer true.

Started by Razgovory, February 17, 2015, 01:12:49 PM

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Fate

It happens a lot with medical science. On the front end we're told half of what we are taught is going to be shown to be wrong in 10 years. As with Marti, it's boring and/or technical stuff.

Jacob

Quote from: garbon on February 17, 2015, 03:10:05 PM
Which is why I would say it meets the thread title but not the OP which seems to be more about things that were taught that we believed to be true but turned out not to be (or were never true but teachers taught them anyway).

If the Megathread Police have a recruitment drive, you'd be a shoo-in. Your enthusiasm and attention to detail on the OP Squad is exemplary.

garbon

"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Admiral Yi

Quote from: Jacob on February 17, 2015, 04:34:29 PM
If the Megathread Police have a recruitment drive, you'd be a shoo-in. Your enthusiasm and attention to detail on the OP Squad is exemplary.

This not being a megathread, or a microthread that should be merged to a megathread, the Megathread Police have no jurisdiction.  Rather your comments would make more sense if they referred to the Semantics Police.

grumbler

Quote from: Jacob on February 17, 2015, 04:34:29 PM
Quote from: garbon on February 17, 2015, 03:10:05 PM
Which is why I would say it meets the thread title but not the OP which seems to be more about things that were taught that we believed to be true but turned out not to be (or were never true but teachers taught them anyway).

If the Megathread Police have a recruitment drive, you'd be a shoo-in. Your enthusiasm and attention to detail on the OP Squad is exemplary.

Indeed.  I don't know why garbo would think it important to note that the thread started as an interesting topic, but turned into a mere list of boring and stupid things people have had to learn because they had bad teachers.

AR's story about Adam's Rib is an example of what the thread should be about.  Your story about learning some details about coal production in Kazakhstan is an example of what it should not be about.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

MadImmortalMan

Quote from: Fate on February 17, 2015, 03:45:06 PM
It happens a lot with medical science. On the front end we're told half of what we are taught is going to be shown to be wrong in 10 years. As with Marti, it's boring and/or technical stuff.


I'm pretty sure the old food pyramid has become a minority-held opinion at this point.
"Stability is destabilizing." --Hyman Minsky

"Complacency can be a self-denying prophecy."
"We have nothing to fear but lack of fear itself." --Larry Summers

The Brain

Quote from: MadImmortalMan on February 17, 2015, 04:56:46 PM
Quote from: Fate on February 17, 2015, 03:45:06 PM
It happens a lot with medical science. On the front end we're told half of what we are taught is going to be shown to be wrong in 10 years. As with Marti, it's boring and/or technical stuff.


I'm pretty sure the old food pyramid has become a minority-held opinion at this point.

A fish, a bird, a reed, a man standing like *this*?
Women want me. Men want to be with me.

Barrister

Quote from: Fate on February 17, 2015, 03:45:06 PM
It happens a lot with medical science. On the front end we're told half of what we are taught is going to be shown to be wrong in 10 years. As with Marti, it's boring and/or technical stuff.

Now that I think about it, it happens in law school too.

Just as an example, I went to law school 1997-2000.  In 1998 the SCC case out with a trio of cases that completely changed administrative law.  So our admin law class in 1998-1999 was taught to us from scratch based on these new cases.

In 2008 though the SCC thought better of it, and completely overhauled admin law again.  So everything I learned in class is now completely wrong.
Posts here are my own private opinions.  I do not speak for my employer.

celedhring

My Spanish language textbook still considered "Galician-Portuguese" to be the same language, and I was told as such by my teachers. It's been centuries since both languages diverged. I've always suspected that, since this was in the late 1980s, it was a remnant of Franco times Spanish cultural imperialism.

That's about the most interesting thing I can come up with that adheres strictly to the OP, sorry.

grumbler

Quote from: MadImmortalMan on February 17, 2015, 04:56:46 PM

I'm pretty sure the old food pyramid has become a minority-held opinion at this point.

Not really.  It has been renamed and tweaked, but the concept is still there and considered valid.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

The Larch

Quote from: celedhring on February 17, 2015, 05:17:11 PM
My Spanish language textbook still considered "Galician-Portuguese" to be the same language, and I was told as such by my teachers. It's been centuries since both languages diverged. I've always suspected that, since this was in the late 1980s, it was a remnant of Franco times Spanish cultural imperialism.

That's about the most interesting thing I can come up with that adheres strictly to the OP, sorry.

You can still find that notion dangling around in philological circles. It has a hard time against the reality down on the ground, but it has some validity up in ivory towers.

grumbler

Quote from: celedhring on February 17, 2015, 05:17:11 PM
My Spanish language textbook still considered "Galician-Portuguese" to be the same language, and I was told as such by my teachers. It's been centuries since both languages diverged. I've always suspected that, since this was in the late 1980s, it was a remnant of Franco times Spanish cultural imperialism.

That's about the most interesting thing I can come up with that adheres strictly to the OP, sorry.

I think that "language as politics" is probably going to be fertile grounds for this kind of discussion, and I think that it is fascinating.  You probably haven't heard of Ebonics, but some US posters will remember that the US had its own home-grown language-as-politics movement.
The future is all around us, waiting, in moments of transition, to be born in moments of revelation. No one knows the shape of that future or where it will take us. We know only that it is always born in pain.   -G'Kar

Bayraktar!

garbon

Quote from: grumbler on February 17, 2015, 06:08:48 PM
Quote from: celedhring on February 17, 2015, 05:17:11 PM
My Spanish language textbook still considered "Galician-Portuguese" to be the same language, and I was told as such by my teachers. It's been centuries since both languages diverged. I've always suspected that, since this was in the late 1980s, it was a remnant of Franco times Spanish cultural imperialism.

That's about the most interesting thing I can come up with that adheres strictly to the OP, sorry.

I think that "language as politics" is probably going to be fertile grounds for this kind of discussion, and I think that it is fascinating.  You probably haven't heard of Ebonics, but some US posters will remember that the US had its own home-grown language-as-politics movement.

In high school my white teacher asked us to all write a poem in ebonics. As he hadn't err taught us ebonics or even anything about it (and my school didn't have a large population of black people), everyone just wrote like black caricatures. :(
"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."
I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Malthus

Quote from: Barrister on February 17, 2015, 05:03:06 PM
Quote from: Fate on February 17, 2015, 03:45:06 PM
It happens a lot with medical science. On the front end we're told half of what we are taught is going to be shown to be wrong in 10 years. As with Marti, it's boring and/or technical stuff.

Now that I think about it, it happens in law school too.

Just as an example, I went to law school 1997-2000.  In 1998 the SCC case out with a trio of cases that completely changed administrative law.  So our admin law class in 1998-1999 was taught to us from scratch based on these new cases.

In 2008 though the SCC thought better of it, and completely overhauled admin law again.  So everything I learned in class is now completely wrong.

The list of law school ones is endless - my personal bugbear in law school was the "patent unreasonableness test" in administrative law, which I always thought made no damn sense - eventually, the SC decided that yes, indeed, the "patent unreasonableness test" made no damn sense.  :lol:
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius

Admiral Yi

Quote from: garbon on February 17, 2015, 06:11:39 PM
In high school my white teacher asked us to all write a poem in ebonics. As he hadn't err taught us ebonics or even anything about it (and my school didn't have a large population of black people), everyone just wrote like black caricatures. :(

Nobody listened to hip-hop?