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Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong is a 1995 book by James Loewen. It critically reviews twelve popular American history textbooks which concludes that textbook authors propagate factually false, eurocentric, and mythologized views of history. The story basically establishes the point that history should be an exciting thing for children to learn, and that American history is exciting, full of events that history textbooks avoid talking about.
Contents |
Introduction
Loewen introduces the book by discussing why he wrote it, and what is wrong with textbooks. "Textbooks keep students in the dark about the nature of history...[They] employ such a godlike tone, it never occurs to most students to question them...As a result of this, most high school seniors are hamstrung in their efforts to analyze controversial issues in our society" (p16). He then goes on to describe the purpose of each chapter.
Loewen's ideas
Loewen proposes that when history teachers elevate American historical figures to the status of heroes, they unintentionally give students the impression that these figures were part of an unattainable past. In other words, the history-as-myth method teaches students that America's greatest days are behind it. If textbooks and teachers were honest about historical controversies and the flaws of America's heroes, Loewen proposes that students would be left with the impression that America is a nation forever learning and improving and that its best days are still to come. Loewen suggests history text books should rely more heavily on primary sources.
Sources
The twelve textbooks Loewen considers are:
- The American Adventure (1975)
- American Adventures (1987)
- American History (1982)
- The American Pageant (1991)
- The American Tradition (1984)
- The American Way (1979)
- The Challenge of Freedom (1990)
- Discovering American History (1974)
- Land of Promise (1983)
- Life and Liberty (1984)
- Triumph of the American Nation (1986)
- The United States: A History of the Republic (1991)
Awards and honors
It is the winner of the 1996 American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award[1] for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship. The book is mentioned in the cover of the Rise Against album, The Sufferer And the Witness.
See also
References
- ^ Call for Nominations - Section Awards, Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities of the American Sociological Association
Page numbers refer to James W. Loewen, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong (1996), ISBN 0-684-81886-8.
