Chapter 1, Summary and Analysis

Lies My Teacher Told Me is an analysis of how high school courses in American history and, more particularly, the textbooks used in teaching them are a disservice to students and the nation the texts and courses seek to protect.

"Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making" examines how American history textbooks make flesh-and-blood individuals degenerate into the pious, perfect creatures. Two 20th-century icons open the examination: Woodrow Wilson and Helen Keller, an important president and a "little person" about whom teachers love to talk. "Herofication" distorts both.

All recalls the movie scene where blind and deaf Keller spells "water" on Anne Sullivan's hand and all accept the moral that anyone can be helped to reach his or her potential. Few college students, however, know that Keller graduates college, studies how blindness is statistically concentrated in the lower class, and uses...