The giant panda is not really a bear
The thing itself didn't change; its official category did.
TaughtDespite the name, giant pandas are more closely related to raccoons than to bears. Their classification is a long-standing puzzle.
NowMolecular evidence settled it: the giant panda is a bear, in the family Ursidae. The red panda is the one that is not, and sits in its own family.
What actually happened
The panda's classification was one of the great arguments in twentieth-century zoology, running for over a century. Anatomists pointed at features it shares with raccoons, including the famous "thumb" that is actually an enlarged wrist bone, while others insisted it was a bear.
Molecular systematics ended the debate. Stephen O'Brien and colleagues published DNA evidence in 1985 showing giant pandas diverged from the main bear lineage roughly 18 to 25 million years ago, making them an early-branching but genuine bear. The red panda, meanwhile, turned out not to be closely related to the giant panda at all; it sits in its own family, Ailuridae, and the two evolved their false thumbs and bamboo diets independently. If your textbook hedged about the panda's identity, the hedge is no longer needed.
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Who was taught this
Still standard through 1992, so anyone who finished school between 1950 and 1986 learned the earlier version.