Thinking Outside the Box

One of the thinks that makes schools of higher learning fun is when you learn that your much-despised ninth-grade teacher was dead wrong about something.  Not that I recommend going to medical school for that reason.  Too much work, not enough sleep.  But, you take your jollies where you can get them.

For those of you who have not had the pleasure of walking around for six months smelling like formaldehyde -- a rite of passage courtesy of gross anatomy -- I provide a glimpse of one of the other sources of pleasure in higher learning: thinking outside the box.  In primary and secondary education, science is taught as a series of facts.  You memorize the facts, you get a good grade.  Yes, from time to time there is lip service for the goal of teaching students how to think, instead of what to think; but this is falling by the wayside, as the effect of enforced mediocrity (aka No Child Left Behind) is felt -- increasingly -- across our great land.  If students don't get good scores on standardized tests, the school could loose funding.  This, predictably, will lead to a bunch of students who all think alike:   the Emperor's New Clones. 

Rant tangents aside, reveling in the belief that blogging might be able to make up for the deficiencies in our educational system, let's take a look at some of those things that you might have been taught about biology, that are turning out to be wrong. 

Today, I provide an example of a misperception that still is taught in high school biology.  Read the rest at The Rest of the Story.