Your teachers weren’t gaslighting you, stop using that word when you mean lying.
Wikipedia may have sited sources but those sources can, and have been, incorrect many times. Misleading information is still prevalent on the site. So even if you steal the sources Wikipedia uses in their articles you better dig deeper because that shit is nefarious. Wikipedia is not immune to western propaganda. They pick and choose what info to put out there from the sources knowing most, like OP, won’t read deeper into anything they site. You’ll just take their word for it.
Literally. At least look for peer reviewed at minimum. The term “source” doesn’t mean correct information, it just has information that could be anything.
Some people just don’t want to do proper research and I get it; school makes learning awful. It should be engaging but our school systems make it a chore. So of course kids are going to look for the easy answers because the curriculum doesn’t encourage exploration. Some teachers are great with that but when the whole school system is regulated by capitalists to create the perfect workers? Yeah you’re gonna get people like OP.