Book report: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen
First off, this guy deserves a medal, because, to write this book, he had to read TWELVE high school American History textbooks in their entirety, a feat I’ll bet has never been attempted before or since. My guess is that his goal was to read an even twenty, but after he woke up in the hospital with his eyes bleeding, he decided to scale back his plans a little, to preserve his health and sanity.
Lowen’s goal is to expose all the information that is incorrect or missing from American History textbooks, which leads to the first amazing fact this book presents: information is incorrect or missing from American History textbooks. My first reaction to learning this was outrage: you mean, they force us to learn this crap and it’s not even true? That’s right, it’s wrong. A lot. My second reaction was: how is this possible? How can you tell people things that aren’t true? Until I realized, this isn’t like, say, math or even French, where you can verify for yourself if information is correct or not. For instance, how would you, an ordinary person, determine what the population of Native Americans was before they were decimated by European diseases? You couldn’t, so you have to take the word of the textbook writers – who probably don’t mention it at all. My third reaction was that of a detective trying to solve a murder mystery: what’s the motive? Why would somebody do this? As Loewen points out, many of the authors of these texts are competent, professional historians. They know the true story, so why don’t they write it? We’ll come back to this.
You certainly learn a lot of interesting facts about American History from this book. For example, I never knew that Woodrow Wilson was such a racist, war-mongering asshole before. Nor did I know that Helen Keller was a fiery radical socialist. The book is full of surprising and fascinating tidbits like this, some pleasant, but most not.
It starts, not surprisingly, with Christopher Columbus, who turns out not to be the brave and heroic vsionary who brought the light of European civilization to the Americas, but a guy who was out to make a buck, and who didn’t mind maiming and killing lots of Native Americans to get that buck. After reading this chapter, residents of Columbus, Ohio would probably want to change the name of their city to Smithville or something.
The second chapter is also about the mistreatment of Native Americans, this time by the Pilgrims. The third chapter is also about the mistreatment of Native Americans, this time by everybody else who hasn’t been mentioned so far. The next chapter makes a nice break, being about the mistreatment of blacks, and the horrors of slavery. In these chapters, Loewen displays one of the main failings of history writers in general: they go on too long about things. Yes, we get it: Europeans horribly mistreated non-Europeans for hundreds of years, and history books leave all that out. Still, just because it’s deplorable doesn’t mean we have to read 500 separate examples. Point made.
By far the most fascinating and eye-opening part was Chapter 7, “The Land of Opportunity”. In this chapter, Loewen reveals what almost nobody in this country is ever taught: the true nature and extent of economic class division in America. This country, like all countries, is, at its core, a plutocracy, ruled by the rich for the rich. This is something that students almost never hear, and yet it is essential for understanding a lot of history, and the economic and political forces that run our country today. The truth is that millions of Americans have suffered and died, and continue to suffer and die, to make a few individuals extremely rich. If you read nothing else in this book, read Chapter 7. And then try to keep a straight face when someone describes America as “The Land of Opportunity”.
So, getting back to the questions posed earlier: why do textbooks omit or falsify so much information? Loewen goes into a long, two-chapter analysis, but it boils down to one theme: we don’t want to hear bad news. We want our forebears to be heroic, noble figures, not people with the same faults and foibles as everyone we know. We want to believe that progress moves ever onward and upward, not downward and backward as we see and hear every day. As a result, we don’t have a real idea of what actually happened and why. Unfortunately, this means we can’t learn from our past, because we don’t know our past.
Loewen’s aim is a good one. Let’s get good, accurate textbooks that reveal our past, warts and all. In many cases, this makes history far more interesting: the characters are flesh and blood people, not marble statues. Let’s call bad deeds bad, and learn how not to repeat them. Let’s recognize the good and learn how to encourage it. Let’s all move forward into a golden shining future opening up new vistas for all Americans – I’m doing it, aren’t I? It’s a tough habit to break.
Recommended in small doses, unless you’re a real history nut.
First off, this guy deserves a medal, because, to write this book, he had to read TWELVE high school American History textbooks in their entirety, a feat I’ll bet has never been attempted before or since. My guess is that his goal was to read an even twenty, but after he woke up in the hospital with his eyes bleeding, he decided to scale back his plans a little, to preserve his health and sanity.
Lowen’s goal is to expose all the information that is incorrect or missing from American History textbooks, which leads to the first amazing fact this book presents: information is incorrect or missing from American History textbooks. My first reaction to learning this was outrage: you mean, they force us to learn this crap and it’s not even true? That’s right, it’s wrong. A lot. My second reaction was: how is this possible? How can you tell people things that aren’t true? Until I realized, this isn’t like, say, math or even French, where you can verify for yourself if information is correct or not. For instance, how would you, an ordinary person, determine what the population of Native Americans was before they were decimated by European diseases? You couldn’t, so you have to take the word of the textbook writers – who probably don’t mention it at all. My third reaction was that of a detective trying to solve a murder mystery: what’s the motive? Why would somebody do this? As Loewen points out, many of the authors of these texts are competent, professional historians. They know the true story, so why don’t they write it? We’ll come back to this.
You certainly learn a lot of interesting facts about American History from this book. For example, I never knew that Woodrow Wilson was such a racist, war-mongering asshole before. Nor did I know that Helen Keller was a fiery radical socialist. The book is full of surprising and fascinating tidbits like this, some pleasant, but most not.
It starts, not surprisingly, with Christopher Columbus, who turns out not to be the brave and heroic vsionary who brought the light of European civilization to the Americas, but a guy who was out to make a buck, and who didn’t mind maiming and killing lots of Native Americans to get that buck. After reading this chapter, residents of Columbus, Ohio would probably want to change the name of their city to Smithville or something.
The second chapter is also about the mistreatment of Native Americans, this time by the Pilgrims. The third chapter is also about the mistreatment of Native Americans, this time by everybody else who hasn’t been mentioned so far. The next chapter makes a nice break, being about the mistreatment of blacks, and the horrors of slavery. In these chapters, Loewen displays one of the main failings of history writers in general: they go on too long about things. Yes, we get it: Europeans horribly mistreated non-Europeans for hundreds of years, and history books leave all that out. Still, just because it’s deplorable doesn’t mean we have to read 500 separate examples. Point made.
By far the most fascinating and eye-opening part was Chapter 7, “The Land of Opportunity”. In this chapter, Loewen reveals what almost nobody in this country is ever taught: the true nature and extent of economic class division in America. This country, like all countries, is, at its core, a plutocracy, ruled by the rich for the rich. This is something that students almost never hear, and yet it is essential for understanding a lot of history, and the economic and political forces that run our country today. The truth is that millions of Americans have suffered and died, and continue to suffer and die, to make a few individuals extremely rich. If you read nothing else in this book, read Chapter 7. And then try to keep a straight face when someone describes America as “The Land of Opportunity”.
So, getting back to the questions posed earlier: why do textbooks omit or falsify so much information? Loewen goes into a long, two-chapter analysis, but it boils down to one theme: we don’t want to hear bad news. We want our forebears to be heroic, noble figures, not people with the same faults and foibles as everyone we know. We want to believe that progress moves ever onward and upward, not downward and backward as we see and hear every day. As a result, we don’t have a real idea of what actually happened and why. Unfortunately, this means we can’t learn from our past, because we don’t know our past.
Loewen’s aim is a good one. Let’s get good, accurate textbooks that reveal our past, warts and all. In many cases, this makes history far more interesting: the characters are flesh and blood people, not marble statues. Let’s call bad deeds bad, and learn how not to repeat them. Let’s recognize the good and learn how to encourage it. Let’s all move forward into a golden shining future opening up new vistas for all Americans – I’m doing it, aren’t I? It’s a tough habit to break.
Recommended in small doses, unless you’re a real history nut.
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