It may sound a little bit misleading,
because this problem is not only limited
to Nigerian schools. It’s a worldwide
phenomenon occasioned by teachers,
lecturers and instructors who make no
effort to update themselves and add to
what they already know. These lies – at
least some of them – were facts at some
point in time, but things have since moved
on. Truths become lies as new discoveries
are being made.
Here are 16 lies that are still dished out the
world over even as you read this:

There are six classes of food: I was taught –
and I know most of you were taught – that
there are 6 classes of food, namely,
proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, fats and
oil, minerals and water. It is no longer the
case. Officially, there are now SEVEN classes
of food: proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins
(or vegetables), fibers, fats and oil, minerals
and water. Fiber is derived from plants and
it was initially left out by nutritionists
because it seemingly does not add any
nutrient to the body. What fiber does that it
alters the way our gastrointestinal tract
absorbs food. Fiber itself is indigestible; it is
broken down in the large intestine not by
the body’s digestive system, but by the
trillions of bacteria that live there.

There are nine planets in the solar
system : Astronomers are regularly
discovering new planets all over the
universe. However, the number of planets in
our own solar system has been reduced
from nine to eight. This is due to the
declassification of Pluto as a planet. Pluto
was officially downgraded by astronomers
at the 26th General Assembly of the
International Astronomical Union which
was held in Prague, Czech Republic, in
2006. It is now a dwarf planet.
Astronomers found out that it is merely a
huge ball of ice and rock orbiting the Sun in
an area known as the Kuiper Belt. The
Kuiper Belt is located beyond the planet
Neptune (which is now the farthest planet
in the solar system) and it contains over
70,000 icy objects similar to Pluto. Pluto
happens to be one of the biggest of these
icy objects, but it’s not the biggest. The
biggest is Eris. Eris, a dwarf planet, is the
largest object in the Kuiper Belt. It’s about
25% more massive than Pluto.

There are four oceans: That was until the
year 2000 when the International
Hydrographic Organization concluded that
a distinct body of sea that completely
surrounds the continent Antarctica will be
the Earth’s fifth ocean. The exact
geographic coordinates of the salty water
are yet to be agreed upon, but most
sources will tell you that it lies to the south
of Australia, New Zealand and the tip of the
South American continent.

There are three states of matter: There are
several states of matter, in fact. According
to physicists, in addition to solid, liquid and
gaseous, plasma can be observed in
everyday life. Actually, scientists claim that
plasma is the most abundant form of
matter in the universe, because most of the
stars, including our own Sun, are in a
plasma state. Other states of matter include
the neutron-degenerate matter, Bose-
Einstein condensates, liquid crystals,
superfluids, quark-gluon plasmas, quantum
hall state, supersolid, string-net liquid,
superglass and dark matter. But these
forms of matter are very rare and some of
them have not been observed, but are
believed to exist.

Humans have only five senses: It turns out
that sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste
are not the only sensory responses human
beings exhibit. Human sensory receptors
can also respond to pain (nociception),
changes in temperature (thermoception),
changes in balance (equilibrioception),
position (proprioception), magnetic
direction (magnetoception) and the
passage of time (chronoception).


Humans evolved from apes: This is a great
lie and misconception that has been here
with us since the day Charles Darwin
published his controversial “On the Origin
of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or
the Preservation of Favoured Races in the
Struggle for Life.” According to this well-
known biological framework, human
beings and the modern-day apes evolved
from a single, now-extinct ancestor. As time
passed by, these ancestors of ours began to
evolve differently based on climatic,
nutritional, geographical and social
changes.

Mount Everest is the highest place on
earth :
Mount Everest is the highest
mountain in the world quite alright, but it’s
not the part of the world that is closest to
outer space. Here how it works: the Earth
does not have a perfectly round structure
like the world globes you’ll find in most
schools. Geographers call this anomaly an
oblate spheroid, which means that the
earth has a bulge towards the equator. As a
result of this bulge, places close to the
equator are


http://saharareporters.com/2014/12/05/16-errors-are-still-taught-nigerian-schools-today-chinedu-rylan

Wow.

OP, this is wonderful. I must commend your efforts. How I wish our schools will put these changes into effect. But why did you stop along the way na? Come and complete it o.

More power to your elbow and your thumbs.

i smell frontpage for you

“further out” from the centre of the Earth
and are closer to outer space than
countries that lie towards the north and
south poles, such as the Scandinavian
countries, Russia, Canada, the United States
and Greenland. Going by this phenomenon,
the title of the highest spot on Earth
belongs to a mountain in Ecuador that you
may not have heard of. The rather
unspectacular Mount Chimborazo in the
Andes of South America has been identified
as the highest point on earth and its closest
part to outer space. The peak is in reality
1.5 miles “higher up” than Mount Everest
because it sits atop the Earth’s bulge,
though it only measures 20,564 ft from sea
level, while Everest measures 29,029 ft. But
for the sake of clarity, Everest is still the
highest mountain in the world from sea
level, but if two objects are descending
from outer space from the same distance
and at the same pace to the two mountains,
the one coming down to Chimborazo will
land before the one descending to
Everest. Everest is actually the fifth furthest
place from the centre of the Earth;
Huascaran in Peru, Cotopaxi in Ecuador,
Kilimanjaro in Tanzania and Chimborazo are
all further.

Babies are born tabula rasa: For ages,
arguments and counterarguments have
been made by psychologists and
philosophers over whether human beings
are born with the so-called blank slate. But
thanks to advancements in genetic studies,
most of us are now in the know that
humans transfer some of their
characteristics (known as traits) to their
offspring. These traits go a long way in
determining how the offspring will react
when put in certain situations and
subjected to certain conditions.

Different parts of the tongue detect
different flavours : Even in my university
days, I was taught by professors that
different parts of the human tongue are
specialized for detecting different tastes.
The so-called tongue map balkanized our
taste organ into areas responsible for
detecting sweetness, bitterness, saltiness,
sourness and unami. Per contra, it turns out
that most taste buds on the tongue and in
other areas of the mouth can detect any
taste irrespective of their position.

Europeans brought Christianity to Africa
and Christianity is a Western
Religion : Christianity is the world’s largest
religion and it originated from Asia in the
geographical East. The movement that gave
rise to Christianity was begun by Jesus
Christ who was born over 2000 years ago
in Bethlehem in present-day Palestine. The
followers of the teachings of Christ were
first called “Christians” in the town of
Antioch which is now a historical site in
present-day Turkey. Antioch lies on the
eastern part of Turkey which is in Asia. It is
not clear when Christianity was brought to
either Europe or Africa. It is recorded in the
Bible that Christ was taken to Egypt as an
infant by Mary and Joseph who were
fleeing from Herod the Great during the
Massacre of the Innocents. However, Christ’s
ministry began few years before He was
crucified. It is not recorded if He went to
Africa or Europe during His ministry. What is
clear, though, is that one of His apostles,
Mark, established the first church in Africa
twelve years after the crucifixion, known as
the Church of Alexandria.
Some years before that, another apostle,
Philip, was recorded in the Acts of the
Apostles to have baptized an Ethiopian
eunuch on the road leading to Gaza from
Jerusalem. The Acts, however, did not tell us
where the eunuch went afterwards or if he
spread the message in Ethiopia. A church
was established in Ethiopia some years
after the Church of Alexandria in Egypt and
it is still in existence today. Most present-
day Ethiopians are Christians and their own
form of Christianity is not linked to the ones
spread by the Europeans.
The Bible, the Church and People in the

Middle Ages believed that the Earth was
flat : According to the notion – which has
been erroneously published in some
textbooks – Christians in the Middle Ages
believed that the Earth was flat. The notion
has it that it was not until Genoese explorer,
Christopher Columbus, had “sailed round
the world” without falling off the Earth's
presumed edge (and “discovered” what
turned out to be North America) that the
Church leaders came to the realization that
the Earth is indeed spherical and not flat.
Contrary to this view, Greek astronomers
and pretty much everyone else then knew
long before the advent of Christianity that
the Earth was spherical. The early Greeks
were renowned astronomers who made
predictions that are still correct today. The
Bible also alluded to a spherical Earth. Isaiah
40:22 says that “He (God) sits enthroned
above the circle of the earth.” It was only a

... Den lets start all over again....

.h

40:22 says that “He (God) sits enthroned
above the circle of the earth.” It was only a
handful of scholars in the Middle Ages who
claimed to be representing the whole
Church that believed in a flat Earth.

Michael Faraday invented electricity : No-one
actually invented electricity. The form of
energy now known as electricity has been
there since the beginning of the world.
Electricity occurs in nature. A lightning bolt,
for example, releases electricity.

Thomas Edison invented the light
bulb : While it is not clear who invented light
bulbs, they were being used as electric
lights more than 50 years before Thomas
Edison patented his famous invention in
1879. What Edison invented was the
world's first commercially viable
incandescent light bulb.

Diabetes is caused by sugar: Sugar doesn’t
directly cause diabetes, but if you consume
too much sugar, you are likely going to get
diabetes. What sugar does is that it
increases the quantity of calories in the
body. Too many calories in the body lead to
weight gain which significantly increases a
person’s likelihood to develop type 2
diabetes.

The Whites kidnapped Africans and sold
them into slavery : This is not entirely true.
Most slaves that were shipped into the
Americas to work in plantations were
actually captured by their own kinsmen and
sold to the Europeans. When it all began,
the Europeans were the ones doing the
kidnapping. They organized abduction
raids to capture slaves from different
communities. But in no time, they realized
that it was too dangerous a venture for
them since they were not familiar with the
inland terrains. What did they do? They
subsequently found people that will do
their dirty jobs. Then came the local chiefs
and the greedy merchants. They were given
this responsibility in exchange for money
and other privileges. At the height of the
slave trade, this practice became a lucrative
business along Nigeria’s Atlantic coast.

The United States of America is the world’s
largest economy : That was until 2014;
October to be precise. The US is still the
richest country when measured by reserves
and collective national wealth, but it no
longer has the world's largest economy,
according to the International Monetary
Fund’s Gross Domestic Product Purchasing
Power Parity (GDP PPP) estimates. China is
now the world’s largest economy. In the
IMF's indices, China’s GDP is now worth
$17.63 trillion compared with the US’
$17.55 trillion. The IMF makes its
calculations based on purchasing power
parity, a measure which is preferred by
most economists. Purchasing power parity
adjusts a country’s GDP for inflation based
on the fact that the prices of goods and
services as well as cost of living vary from
country to country. When not measured
based on purchasing power parity, the
United States is still the world’s number one
economy with a GDP of $16.8 trillion
compared to China’s $10.3 trillion.

http://saharareporters.com/2014/12/05/16-errors-are-still-taught-nigerian-schools-today-chinedu-rylan

Great to learn some new or would i say yet unknown facts

[size=32pt]It Only shows that Learning is a continuous process. [/size]

my teacher is a liar then.

OP, no school ever taught that Faraday invented electricity. At least I'm very sure that what I was taught in school was that Faraday discovered electricity.

There has always been a difference between discovery and invention and my primary school teachers always made sure we knew about that difference.

They never taught us wrong,the facts where just updated

Mack3N:
They never taught us wrong,the facts where just updated

Then it wasn't wrong but now it is , he is just pointing them out so it will be corrected .

guy den dey teach some of this 4 tertiary inst, all the same i tink they should upgrade there wateva note

Ok

Elantracey:



Then it wasn't wrong but now it is , he is just pointing them out so it will be corrected .

how do you know they have not been corrected
Or are you still in high school,because thats where these were taught

Learning is a continuous process just researcher are conducting researches year in year out, so also more things to learn comes out. You can't teach what you don't know, most especially with the dilapidated nature of our education teachers don't bother to research. GOVERNMENT ARE THE WORST ENEMY TO EDUCATION IN NIGERIA.

Mack3N:
how do you know they have not been corrected
Or are you still in high school,because thats where these were taught

be honest with your self because I know you didn't even know about some of the things he corrected not to talk of all school in the nation .

Op,nice job....but I'm gonna argue about John Locke's tabula rasa.

Truly,cognitive traits and capabilities are passed from parents to offspring. But what John Locke was saying is dat a child comes to the world with a blank slate (tabula rasa) i.e blank mind...the child's experience in life is written on that slate and therefore is one on the key factors that develop d individuals personality.

If you look at urself. your childhood experience, the kind of environment u grew up in helped shape who you are today. Every individual responds to d world according to his own experience, views and perception.

Definitely, parents can't pass their own life experience to their ofsprings through the genes. If that was the case, every Jew born in present day would naturally hate Germans even without hearing the world war 2 stories. African Americans would still be feeling the pains of their slave ancestors... Lolz

So I think the scientists that related genetics with "tabula rasa" must av had d wrong perception of what John Locke meant. Memory and perception cannot be passed by genes. It is possible to pass cognitive capabilities and patterns.

Elantracey:



be honest with your self because I know you didn't even know about some of the things he corrected not to talk of all school in the nation .

You are very correct......no one has monopoly of knowledge.
But then,he can't justify his claim that they are still being taught at schools,unless he is still having first hand experience at such schools...
I believe the errors have been corrected....its long overdue.

Mack3N:

You are very correct......no one has monopoly of knowledge.
But then,he can't justify his claim that they are still being taught at schools,unless he is still having first hand experience at such schools...
I believe the errors have been corrected....its long overdue.

I taught at a good private school during ASUU strike and I have siblings who are in primary and high school and I go through their work sometimes , most of these things have not been corrected .

OP ya head is there

Elantracey:


I taught at a good private school during ASUU strike and I have siblings who are in primary and high school and I go through their work sometimes , most of these things have not been corrected .

Really...now thats some experience....oga jona oooo

many times will they create this topic

K

Lesson learnt

nice one @ OP

Nice 1

More though not all are convinced enough

Interesting. I knew some but knowing more never hurt anyone except one's self