The case in three lines. The Green Gazette prints a pull quote under Albert Einstein's name in a parent's article against the school's attendance charts. A retired physics teacher writes in to say he never said it. Traced back past a staffroom poster, the earliest link to Einstein is a 1986 business book, and the sentence itself is in a 1963 sociology textbook by William Bruce Cameron. Tara is handed the corrections box.

One question to ask. "What should the correction say?" Then: "If the sentence is true, does the name matter?" Let them argue both sides.

One thing to do at the table. Find a famous quote one of you has seen shared or printed recently. Try to find the oldest copy with a date and a page number. Notice how often the trail ends at a poster or a list, and say "often attributed to" when it does.

The grown-up layer. The case separates a true claim (numbers cannot hold everything that matters) from a false attribution (Einstein said it). Misattributed quotations are common because a famous name makes a sentence feel more authoritative. The habits it models are tracing to the oldest dated source, asking who would know best, and noticing when a name is being used as an argument from authority.

The case leaves the correction blank on purpose. Ask for it before you offer yours.