Why do schools persist in teaching students factually incorrect information about the world?

So I have a foster brother, I cannot recall what year he is in on school, but I think he's about to start grade 7.

Anyway, when I was in school, I was taught there are 3 states of matter, solid, liquid, and gas.

Now I'm damn near 30, and so that was nearly 2 decades ago I was taught this.

I now know about Plasma, Liquid Crystal, Bose–Einstein condensates, neutron-degenerate matter, and quark–gluon plasma and such.

Now, this many years on, it surprised me that schools are still teaching that there are "only" three states of matter.

Now upon him telling me this and me pulling up some information, I gave him a rough understanding of the other states of matter, which he now has used to blow his teacher, and classmates, minds. He's a bright kid and found it interesting.

They also told him that humans have "only" 5 senses, completely ignoring senses like Proprioception, neuron sensors in the brain, kinaesthetic senses in your muscles that help you with actually coordinating your limbs, senses that tell you that you are suffocating, etc.

So my main question is, with our massively increased, and increasing, understanding of science, the world around us, and the human body, why are curriculums not reflecting this kind of information?

I mean, I would call myself dumb, but the building blocks I built my life off are now decades out of date, I'm still learning as humanity learns, and I'm wondering why we aren't giving kids these days the benefit of the sum of knowledge that we as a collective have now learned, giving them a bigger and more fundamental understanding of the world?

And don't get me started on the way they taught him maths, he asked me to help him do something called "The common core" one night, I taught him old school long addition, subtraction and division which he found super easy compared to the common way they taught, however he's been told by his teacher to do it "the hard way" because "that's what the other kids know and what he's been taught by the teacher" and she "didn't understand how he got to his answer, even though it was correct"

I mean, when it comes to stuff like maths, there are a few ways to skin a cat, so as long as he shows his working, and the answer is right, shouldn't he be good to go? That's how it was when I was in school.

Anyway, I kind of went off on a tangent there with the math bit at the end, I'm interested to hear what educators say about the how's and the whys.

Submitted September 29, 2019 at 04:07AM by Rumbuck_274 https://ift.tt/2nF8KkQ