What *did* we learn in school?

I was browsing through the internets the other day, as I am wont to do, and I came across a piece talking about how Pluto is not a planet.  Pluto isn't a planet?  Well, duh, where were you in 2006?  Didn't you catch the uproar over how something that we had been taught in school for roughly 90 years was now wrong?  For those who need a quick refresher, in 2006, the International Astronomical Union (now those guys know how to party!!!) officially listed three criteria to be considered a planet: the body must be in orbit around the Sun, it must be massive enough to have a nearly round shape, and (where Pluto fails) it must "clear the neighborhood" around its orbit.  Fair enough, at least they gave Pluto a reason for its rejection; it is kind of funny that the mnemonic device for schoolchildren to learn the planets would have to be changed, albeit slightly.  Instead of "my very excellent mother just served us nine pizzas," (or nice pasta, or nutty poo) children now say, "my very excellent mother just served us NOTHING!!!" (I guess she's not as excellent as you thought, huh?  I bet you wish Pluto was a planet again so you could have some freaking pizza!)

But so it got me to thinking about all of the stuff that we learned in school that is now wrong.  I realize that, obviously, as humanity discovers more and more, we'll expand our knowledge and so those sorts of lists will be adjusted accordingly.  For example, I don't know how many elements there were "officially," but I'm pretty sure when I was in 6th grade science class, the periodic table had somewhere in the neighborhood of maybe 102 elements, and now I think we have 112 named elements recognized by IUPAC (the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry - another group of rock stars), with another six supposedly discovered but not yet confirmed.  I'm not complaining about this; such is the nature of discovery.  But here are some things you might find surprising:


How many oceans are there?   Four, right?  Atlantic, Pacific, Indian, and Arctic?  Surely we haven't downgraded the Arctic Ocean into a sea or a lake or anything, right?  Well, actually, the International Hydrographic Organization is in the process of officially ratifying the existence of a *fifth* ocean, the Southern Ocean, which carves off pieces of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans south of 60 degrees south latitude to make a ring around Antarctica. 

Image From Wikimedia Commons

Well, how about colors of the visible spectrum?  We still have ROY G BIV; surely they haven't added any more colors, right?  Would you believe that "nurple" is the new color that follows violet?  Hopefully not, because this is not the case.  Actually, most modern color scientists no longer recognize indigo as a visually distinct color in its own right, but rather as a hue of blue or violet.  As color is a little more subjective than, say, the official definition of a planet, ROY G BIV will probably continue to be taught in classrooms, but probably just because it's easier to remember than ROY GBV.  What do you think:

Image From Wikimedia Commons

And so now, I think I understand why our schools are in the state they are - how can we hold our schools to a high standard if we can't even figure out how many planets there are, or how many oceans the Earth has, or even what colors we can see???  Did I even really learn anything in school???