Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong

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Summary: Tell Your Kids to Schedule History right after lunch
Review: James W. Loewen has written two very useful books here, the first a neat compilation of the top ten things that they never explained properly in high school history class and the second, all the cultural, political, and economic reasons why the educational system failed all of us.

Even those of us who consider ourselves well-versed in history need this refresher course. Loewen explains why Columbus's journey to the New World was not the first, but more importantly the last, in that it set in place the political and economic systems that we live under today. If they taught that Columbus was a slave-trader whose main contribution was the introduction of diseases that killed millions of indigenous folk, I don't remember that from my days at P.S. 116.

Loewen moves on deftly to more recent events, telling who Helen Keller really was (the leader of the American socialist and workers party) and why no one recalls or was ever taught anything about her except her rise from extreme adversity.

Then Woodrow Wilson appears, a native son of Virginia who re-introduced 19th century ways into 20th century Princeton and Washington, and did not mind a few foreign adventures along the way. The Russians still remember his meddling in their civil war, but it is long forgotten here. Loewen also enlightens us about the Mormons, John Brown, Jamestown, and the early Thanksgivings.

But enough history lessons. Loewen then moves into the area of his passion, which is why the US educational system avoids bad news, indiscretion, avarice, and conflict, and focuses instead on patriotism and the beneficial role of white men. The system is stacked against proper teaching of history for many reasons.

Most of the teachers have little education themselves in the subject, many being coaches with other committments. Few have the time or resources to develop their competency and all fear the type of open-ended teaching where they can be shown less than all-knowing.

Publishers are focused on best-selling textbooks, which requires acceptance by textbook advisory groups with patriotic and conservative agendas. Textbooks authors are typically college professors with no interaction with their readers and no system in place for peer review. Teachers prefer books with easy to use teaching aids such as pre-built exams, but have minimal say in book selection anyway.

Loewen has crafted a book that all who are interested in history and education should read. He is uniquely qualified, being an established historian with long experience in the textbook development, selling, and acceptance processes.

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Summary: Great book.
Review: Great book. Fascinating. Also, truly scare how so much of American history has be "erased" or "avoided."

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Summary: A Right Wing Point of View
Review: Loewen has been accused of being liberal, but one rarely ever hears the term conservative or right wing except when liberals are being attacked and of course liberals are ALWAYS ATTACKED FIRST by right wingers. The assumption then is that right wing is normal and natural while liberal is abnormal and deserves to be debunked. But if right wing is normal and natural, why then all the hysteria when one book comes out with a supposedly liberal assessment of history? Furthermore, right wingers connect liberal with meaning anti-white which is clear from the reviews above when Loewen himself is neither liberal nor anti-white. Worse still, the right wingers ALWAYS defend their position (which is curious because normal and natural are by definition indefensible) in terms of ATTACKING non-whites whom they curiously link with liberals!

Read Loewen and then read Zinn not because they're liberal but because you want to know the truth that has been assiduously withheld from you to keep you in fealty to a system of sexism and racism and democratic classism.

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Summary: I Want the Truth!
Review: American history is often ranked by high school students as one of their least favorite courses. Even in college, very few students take a course in history unless it's a requirement for graduation. The subject of U.S. history is often criticized for being boring and even sleep- inducing by people of all ages.

Author James Loewen feels one of the main reasons for the dislike of history is the way it is presented in textbooks. In this book, he points out the many falsehoods that are commonly printed in our American history books. American history, at the high school level, has to be taught (according to school boards and others in charge) in a non- offensive way. There is also pressure from certain groups to make leaders of the past into larger than life heroes and to avoid most any form of negativity. This is why our American history textbooks are often so bland and why students have such a difficult time finding anything interesting to say about this subject.

Christopher Columbus, the Pilgrims, and the early American founders are among the many topics covered in this book. Loewen shows how and why these and other topics are often misrepresented in our children's classrooms. In an effort to remain as politically correct as possible, most anything of a controversial nature or anything that makes the United States look bad is purged from the text. Only at the college level is this trend reversed but according to Loewen, by this time, students are usually so turned off that they don't want to take another history class again.

Most of the pages of this book are spent debunking old myths about history and explaining the brutal way that Native Americans and African American were often treated in the past. The reason Loewen emphasizes these areas so much is because virtually nothing is said about them in high school textbooks. Again, the people in charge feel that this type of information makes the United States look bad and tarnishes the images of our leaders. Thus, they delete most any mention of these topics from the books.

This book is a pretty good one, but the discussions will bother traditionalists and others who would rather live in a fantasy world and pretend that these things never took place and that the United States government is perfect in every way. But for the rest of us, this is an enjoyable read that gets you to re-think what you were told in high school history class as you fought the urge to doze off.