Lies They Teach in School Quotes

“... there is no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.” —H. L. Mencken, Prejudices, Third Series (1922), Chapter 3”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

“Although the Americans lost the battle, they showed for the first time that they could stand up to the best of the British army, a force superior in numbers, training, equipment, and experience. Which makes for a glorious page in American history—except for a few details: The Battle of Bunker Hill was not fought on Bunker Hill, but farther down the peninsula on Breed’s Hill. And no one knows which American commander issued the order.”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

“It was June 17, 1775, during the siege of Boston. Colonial forces, having locked the British into the city, learned that the redcoats planned to occupy several surrounding hills as a prelude to breaking the siege. Ahead of the British, a revolutionary garrison had been assembled on the Charlestown Peninsula, a strategic area that overlooked both Boston and its harbor and offered a vantage point for artillery fire on the city. Throughout the previous night the militiamen had labored to build a defensive fortification. In the morning, General William Howe led the attacking troops, which were repulsed twice by the hill’s defenders, who inflicted devastating losses on the British regulars. On their third assault, however, the seasoned British soldiers successfully broke through the colonists’ breastwork and overran the small fort and the assembled colonial volunteers. But theirs was a Pyrrhic victory, the king’s forces suffering more than 1,000 casualties of their force of 2,200.”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

“But his most lasting influence grew out of his singular knack for making reading fun for children in such international favorites as The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Hop on Pop, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. All were made more appealing by his repetitive use of simple language and his outrageous illustrations. Incidentally, although we have become accustomed to pronouncing his name rhyming with “Juice,” his stated preference was more Germanic: “Seuss—rhymes with voice.”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

“(Recently, William Edward White, a student at Brown University, was revealed to have substituted in one game for the Providence Grays on June 21, 1879, five years before Walker. But White’s qualification is uncertain: he was only a stand-in, not a regular team member, and was the son of a white father and a biracial mother. It should be remembered that at the time a person would be considered black if only one of his progenitors was African American even three or four generations back. News articles of the time indicate that contemporary reporters, unaware of his racial background, assumed he was white.)”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

“Robinson was the first in the modern era, but the first African American team member in the majors was an Ohioan named Moses Fleetwood Walker, who played catcher with the Toledo Blue Stockings in the 1884 season.”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

“The Eighteenth Amendment to the Constitution— proposed by Congress on December 18, 1917— prohibited the consumption of alcoholic beverages. Don’t you believe it. The Eighteenth—or, as it was popularly known, the Prohibition Amendment—made no restriction on drinking or possessing liquor, or on serving it to friends, or even to mere acquaintances. Nor was the purchase of alcoholic beverages declared illegal. All it prohibited was “the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors” used for “beverage purposes.” Under the amendment, it was illegal to sell liquor but not against the law to buy it or own it. Nor did the amendment define what “intoxicating liquors” were. That was left to the National Prohibition Act (popularly known as the Volstead Act, not to be confused with the constitutional amendment) which defined an offending potable as any beverage that contained at least one-half of 1 percent of alcohol by volume. The Volstead Act—which was passed in October 1919, becoming effective on February 1, 1920—went beyond the amendment to extend the ban to purchase or possession. Medicinal application was excluded, as was sacramental use in religious rites. The Volstead bill had been vetoed by President Wilson, but his veto was overridden by Congress. The amendment, after approval by thirty-six states, was declared ratified on January 29, 1919, and remained in effect for almost fifteen years. It was finally repealed by the Twenty-first Amendment, which was adopted December 5, 1933. And, one bit of collateral information—which imbibers will laud but prohibitionists will grieve—the Eighteenth was the only constitutional amendment ever to be repealed.”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

“In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin introduced the concept known as “survival of the fittest.” Don’t you believe it. Yes, he did discuss the principle, but that is not what he called it. Darwin analyzed the concept in great detail, but referred to it as “natural selection.” The term “survival of the fittest” is nowhere to be found in his original 1859 publication, or in any of its subsequent three editions. The expression was provided by Herbert Spencer, a philosopher contemporary with Darwin, in his Principles of Biology in 1864. Spencer found the phrase descriptive of an economic process—parallel to that of biological evolution—by which companies adapt to the marketplace in order to increase their ability to grow and prosper.”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

“Then, in the 1400s, medical education began including dissection of human corpses in a new, realistic approach to anatomy. But even then, students were not allowed hands-on participation. Typically, the teacher sat and lectured while a barber did the cutting and students observed. Not for several hundred years thereafter were students themselves permitted to do dissections. But as the practice spread, it became harder to obtain bodies for teaching. Enter the grave robbers, or resurrectionists as they were called, who by the eighteenth century turned a good profit supplying bodies for physicians to study. They robbed the graves of the poor and unclaimed, those who were least likely to be missed. Some took their practice a bit far, as witness the notorious Burke and Hare, who committed several murders to procure corpses for sale. So, absent those who took the career too seriously, grave robbers may actually have contributed to medical understanding.”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

“Rothstein served as financier of the machination, not as prime provocateur, although he later also provided some muscle to convince recalcitrant players to stay in the fold.”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

“The misconception is in fact so common that the USPS has felt the need to post a disclaimer on its official Web site, offering the following explanation: This inscription was supplied by William Mitchell Kendall of the firm of McKim, Mead & White, the architects who designed the New York General Post Office. Kendall said the sentence appears in the works of Herodotus and describes the expedition of the Greeks against the Persians under Cyrus, about 500 B.C. The Persians operated a system of mounted postal couriers, and the sentence describes the fidelity with which their work was done. Professor George H. Palmer of Harvard University supplied the translation, which he considered the most poetical of about seven translations from the Greek. So while our mail deliverers may take pride in these sentiments, and may strive to live up to the stringent code expressed in this inscription, it is not the official doctrine of the U.S. Postal Service.”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

“The Inquisition eventually came to an end by the late seventeenth century, closing a sad period in European history, an era during which it is estimated some five hundred thousand people were executed throughout Europe. But in England and the colonies, contrary to common belief, not one accused witch was burned at the stake.”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

“But, contrary to popular belief, its name has nothing to do with the red of communism. The word krasnaya meant “beautiful” in old Russian, and “red” only more recently, originally meant to describe St. Basil’s, then later applied to the entire square.”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

“With characteristic cynicism, Hemingway said, “They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

“A football is not pigskin. It’s made of cowhide. A baseball is not horsehide. It’s also made of cowhide. When Juliet asks, “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?”, she’s not asking where he is, but rather, in the meaning of the time, why he is doing what he’s doing. Bone china actually does contain bone. Calcified animal-bone ash adds to the durability of the product. Henry Ford is thought to be the innovator of mass production, but just before 1800, Eli Whitney, of cotton gin fame, found a way to manufacture muskets by machine, producing interchangeable parts. Bix Beiderbecke, the renowned jazz musician, did not play the trumpet. His instrument was the cornet. Lucrezia Borgia was not the wicked murderess she is reputed to have been. Her major fault, according to Bergen Evans, was “an insipid, almost bovine, good nature.” Contrary to much popular usage, hoi polloi does not refer to the elite; rather, it means the common people. Natural gas, the kind used for heating and cooking in the home, is odorless. Odiferous additives are put in to give the gas a recognizable smell as a measure to alert people to gas leaks. Muhammad Ali did not win the heavyweight gold medal at the 1960 Rome Olympics. His gold in 1960 was in the light heavyweight category. The heavyweight gold went to Franco De Piccoli of Italy. Sacrilegious means violating or profaning anything sacred. In spite of its frequent mispronunciation, the word is not related to religion or religious.”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies

“illustrations. Incidentally, although we have become accustomed to pronouncing his name rhyming with “Juice,” his stated preference was more Germanic: “Seuss—rhymes with voice.”
― Herb Reich, Lies They Teach in School: Exposing the Myths Behind 250 Commonly Believed Fallacies