Do you know what are in your kids textbooks ?

[Modelworks]

Originally posted by: DLeRium

Originally posted by: CLite

Sound travels in waves. Waves require space between solids or they wouldn't propagate .

oh boy.........

How about you stop assessing your children's text books and re-assess yours if that is what you learned.

The particles that transmit sound in solids are infact the solid, these solid particles are more densely packed than air hence the faster transmission of sound. If you analyze dynamic responses of say a steel structure the transmission of stress occurs at the speed of sound in a solid, additionally for events like waterhammer in water the transmission of the pressure wave is at the speed of sound in liquid.

He probably meant waves require a medium to travel through... a medium is usually something physical.. something of size.

Exactly what I meant

 

[Modelworks]

We have gotten off topic slightly, lets skip what the issues themselves be it physics or politics or slavery and figure out why the problems with textbooks exist and how can we solve them ?
Clearly making a new book every year and paying millions for the corrections is not the solution.
Maybe parents should have more input into what goes into the text book before it is printed rather than having to wait till it shows up in their kids hands.

 

[WHAMPOM]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Fox or Faux is doing a story on this friday at 9pm EST if any want to DVR it.
I'm curious as to what they will find. I think many know that textbooks have been going downhill for several years. Facts are not checked, things are omitted and sometimes outright lies are being taught. It is no wonder kids have poor test scores, they are only repeating what they are being taught.


Some that I was able to find:

Gravity in space is zero
There are seven colors in the rainbow
Sound travels better through solids and liquids
Lakes and oceans are blue because they reflect the blue sky
Electricity is a form of energy
Electricity is made of electrons
Static electricity is caused by friction
Ben Franklin's kite was struck by lightning
Light always travels at 186,000 miles per second
The stuff that flows through wires is called 'electric current'

109,263 errors found in math books being considered for elementary school children and teachers, that is one single edition. Despite the errors, state board members tentatively approved most of the books for use in public schools beginning next fall -- subject to correction of the errors. The total projected cost for the elementary school math books is $116.8 million.

textbook explains the twinkling of stars thus -- for the observer on earth, the light appears to come from a point, say B, although it originated from another point, say A. Because of the variation in density, the extent of bending (light) changes continuously. So the observer on Earth sees the star at B at one instant, C at another and so on. This causes the star to twinkle.

Illustration depicting the equator running through central Texas

A special section by the National Geographic Society shows a modern recreation of a Galileo experiment in which objects of different weights are dropped from the Leaning Tower of Pisa. But Galileo never performed such an experiment,

Wrong words as the beginning of the Declaration of Independence

Credits Galileo, rather than Newton and Descartes, with discovering the correct law of inertia.

Incorrect formula for the volume of a sphere

The Vietnam war was between north and south Korea.

Fox will probably just focus on political stuff.
Curious what others here know about.

Just what is the problem? These books are written for Texas public schools and there these mistakes are considered corrections.

 

[miketheidiot]

Originally posted by: MovingTarget

Originally posted by: eskimospy

Originally posted by: JeffreyLebowski

Originally posted by: waggy

Originally posted by: xj0hnx
When I took Texas History back in the early 80's in Jr High school, we learned that at the Alamo all occupants were killed, recently I noticed the story has change to a more politically correct version were the Mexican Army only killed the men, and let all the women and children go.

yeap seen that.

Also the reasons for the Civil war have changed. I learned that it was about states rights. Now its because of slavery.

Same with Lincoln and slavery. now he is a champion of equal rights for slaves. before he did it just to annoy the south more.

This is one that pisses me off the most.
I love blowing peoples minds when they say the civil war was about slavery and racism.
The 1st documented slave in the new world was owned by a black man.
There WERE white slaves. Granted they had some black in them, but there were people that were indistiguishly white that were slaves. They had blue eyes, pale skin and curly red hair.

Guys I hate to blow your minds, but the Civil War WAS about slavery, and chattel slavery in the United States was overwhelmingly whites owning blacks. While the cultures of both the north and the south were extremely racist at the time, the south had institutionalized it to a far greater degree.

There were lots of causes for the Civil War, but a whole ton of them can be directly traced back to the institution of slavery, and it contributed more to the war than any other factor.

Slavery was a part of the cause of the Civil War, but to say the war was about slavery is flat out wrong. States rights' played a huge role, too, but one must consider the distribution of political power and the competing interests of an agrarian vs. industrial economy. Slavery could be considered a symptom of this. The Civil War could've still happened even if the South and North had no qualms about the slavery issue. Abolition was more a symptom of the war, not a justification of it.

The funniest part is now that the South is part of the union (again), one can go and ask any young and educated Southern child who won the war. The answer is quite amusing: we did (as in the union).

the primary states right issue was slavery.

 

[Vic]

OMFG be afraid! :Q

:roll:

If you don't like what's in your kid's textbooks, then take responsibility and teach them yourselves.

 

[DrPizza]

Originally posted by: eskimospy
Uhmm, a lot of those 'wrong facts' aren't wrong. Sound does travel most quickly through solids and liquids (depends on how you want to define 'best' I guess), electricity is most certainly a form of energy, electric current is quite frequently created by electrons, and depending on the year of the child learning it I'd be very comfortable telling him only that. (I don't see why we need to bring charged ions in limited mediums into it), and I'm not aware of much else that flows through wires besides electric current, etc.. etc.

Current doesn't flow. Would you say that in a river, the current flows, or in a river is the flow of water defined as the current?

I see several people attempting to define electricity. You're wasting your time. There is no workable definition of electricity. Depending on the source, and you guys can quote source after source to try to make "your" case, electricity is defined as something else that there is already a word for. Sometimes electricity is defined by giving the definition of charge. Sometimes it's defined by giving the definition of electrical energy, or potential difference, or current, or... The word "electricity" is fairly meaningless. Perhaps best to sum it up by saying electricity is a branch of science that studies all these phenomena. Also, if "electricity" is defined as energy, wtf is "static electricity"? Is it "energy that stays in one place"? When you walk across the carpet and touch the door knob, you get a shock. Doesn't sound very static to me either!

Now, back to current. So, you want to define current as the flow of charges (or holes.) Wonderful!!! So, I plug my toaster in to a potential difference of 120 volts, and my wires have a current of 15 amps. Wait a second, wtf? I thought that in alternating current, the electrons (or holes) just wiggle back and forth? Wtf is flowing?? Nothing's going anywhere!
(Hopefully that doesn't induce too many headaches while people reassess what they "learned.")

Oh, and I finally found the article I was looking for. (I found it in several places, but the author deserves credit - most people have left his name off.)
http://www.eskimo.com/~billb/miscon/whatis.html

 

[DrPizza]

Oh, and for what it's worth, yes, I know what's in the textbooks. I'm a teacher. I do all I can to point out misconceptions in their books. And, I spend a decent amount of time getting them to unlearn the misconceptions that some of these simplified definitions have given them.

 

[venkman]

I bet history books still say that columbus sailed in 1492 to prove the world was round. It makes me wonder what the History books will say 100-500 years from now. We fought a war in Iraq to save the poor Iraqies from the Nazis? Birthers flew tor Mars to prove that Obama wasn't born in the US?

 

[Siddhartha]

Originally posted by: Wheezer
People wonder why jobs are leaving....it is partially due to our pathetic education system, partially because of lazy children and partially because of lazy parents. Education after 18 in this country is assumed to be a right automatically given out, it is no longer a privilege to those that work for it. In the public school system we continuously lower the standards until all the kids pass.

Who the fuck would want to hire a bunch of fucktards like what is being churned out from that meat grinder called public schools in this country?

Companies are moving jobs overseas because labor is cheaper in Indial and China.

 

[DrPizza]

I've never seen nor heard of a history textbook that says Columbus sailed to prove the Earth was round. This was an accepted fact (that the Earth was round in Columbus' time) by anyone with any intelligence and education. It's similar to the moon conspiracy, 9/11 conspiracy, global warming, etc. Some of the public at large is ignorant of the scientific truth. But that doesn't mean educated people are.