Students around the world are taught that Thomas Edison, the 19th-century American scientist and businessman, invented the phonograph, the electric light bulb and the motion picture camera, among other marvels.
Read a Chinese textbook and you may be surprised to learn that at the age of just seven, Edison ingeniously set up a series of mirrors to maximise the poor light as surgeons performed an appendectomy on his mother.
All Chinese students are taught the story but three teachers from Zhejiang province hit the headlines last month when they asked a very simple question: why?
The teachers' concern was not with youngsters learning about Edison. Rather, it was that the story was entirely fictitious. No historical records offer evidence that the event took place, and the first appendectomy was not carried out for another 33 years.
'These bizarre proverbs were made to instil perceived good values, like creativity and family bonds in the Edison case,' one of the teachers, Guo Chuyang from Hangzhou, told China Youth Daily.
Tying in a historical figure like Edison was believed to help drive home the message, Guo said, 'but the fact that it was fabrication undermined whatever message it was intended to deliver'.
