Do we need to rewrite the textbooks?

Is it time to rewrite textbooks are children are using at school? For example, how would you answer the following questions:

How many senses do you have?
Which of the following are magnetic: a tomato, you, paperclips?
What are the primary colors of pigments and paints?
What region of the tongue is responsible for sensing bitter tastes?
What are the states of matter?

If you answered five; paperclips; red, yellow and blue; the back of the tongue; and gas, liquid and solid, then you would have got full marks in any school exam. But you would have been wrong.

Go here to find out why.

When I went to school, I was taught that there were nine planets in our solar system. How how many do scientists now say there are? Answer: eight. They have discovered that Pluto is not a planet. It is now considered to be one of five dwarf planets. An additional 40 billion Earth-sized planets are thought to be in the Milky Way galaxy. It has only been in the last few years that we even knew anything about other solar systems.

(Thanks to my daughter Sara.)