Is all curriculum this bad?

  

I know, I know, it's cliché to be a teacher that's complaining about the curriculum. But I have to get this off my chest. We've been doing science classes on the Solar System, which has been amazing because the kids are fascinated by it and it isn't hard to engage them. Being somewhat of a nerd, I actually love these topics, so I get really jazzed up in class. Happily, you don't have to know all that much about astronomy to teach it to third graders.

But you do have to know a decent amount in order to write the textbook. Right? Right?

Well, let's take a look inside the book, shall we?

There are three dwarf planets? False. Five. 

Pluto is the furthest planet from the Sun? False. If we're going to go with this whole three-dwarf-planets thing, Eris is three times the distance from the Sun as Pluto. Also, it isn't furthest it's farthest.

Assertion: The atmosphere is 1000 kilometers thick. False. The atmosphere is about 100 kilometers thick.

Assertion: The Moon is 49 times smaller than Earth. False. It's 4 times smaller than Earth in diameter and is 1/81 of its mass.

Wrong again. Saturn doesn't have seventeen moons, it has sixty two.

Between this and telling kids that they'll put their lives in danger by sleeping in a room with a plant...for the love of Pete, Spain, it's time to shape up.

This textbook, by the way, was published in 2011, so it isn't simply that it's an old textbook hanging around the elementary school. I think just nobody bothered to do their homework.

And you know what's really depressing? This is only one unit.