16 Errors That Are Still Taught In Nigerian Schools

The title may be 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 “further out” from the centre of the
Earth than places that are far away from it.
Ethiopia, Kenya, Gabon, Colombia, the
Democratic Republic of Congo and other
countries that straddle the equator are “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
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.