I often wonder if some of the simplifications we commonly teach do more harm than good. "Small thing orbits big thing" is one of them, "a thrown ball follows a parabola" is another one (it's true on a flat earth, but in reality you launch the ball into a highly elliptical orbit that just happens to intersect earth's surface after a few meters).

These simplifications are often conceptually not that much simpler, they just have much simpler math. But saying "x is what's happening, but in these circumstances we can treat it as y" is an important skill in science and life, we should teach it more (and benefit from fewer misunderstandings caused by teaching only the simplification)