Essay on A Critical Analysis of Lies My Teacher Told Me

Lies have been around for as long as people have been. We all lie, whether it is to protect someone we love of to cover up something we don’t want others to know about, it is still lying, and we all do it everyday. Lying has become the new normal for our modern society, so much so, that some of us have lost our morals completely. It is just so much easier and quicker to just lie to someone than to tell the truth, and now you can never tell who is lying to you or who is telling the truth. People use to have morals about lying and many people would feel bad about it and teach their children to never lie, but now in today’s society they just pop out of our mouths like they're nothing. We will never stop lying because it’s easier to live a lie

All history comes with contradictions. With every moment in history comes a corresponding moment which can take the accuracy and understanding and change them forever. Throughout time people add small pieces of information to great events in our past. This is where we get the misinterpretation of history. In chapter five of the book Lies My Teacher Told Me, these contradictions are brought into light and force us to look at them again. As I have learned in my history courses we can always question the accuracy of a story but we may never fully understand the truth. There have been three important times I have been through that have shaped my understanding of history today, specifically the part of history dealing with slavery and racism.

High school history textbooks are seen, by students, as presenting the last word on American History. Rarely, if ever, do they question what their text tells them about our collective past. According to James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, they should be. Loewen has spent considerable time and effort reviewing history texts that were written for high school students. In Lies, he has reviewed twenty texts and has compared them to the actual history. Sadly, not one text measures up to the author's expectation of teaching students to think. What is worse, though, is that students come away from their classes without "having developed the ability to think coherently about social

Loewen’s thesis in chapter three of “Lies My Teacher Told Me” was that almost everything we know about Thanksgiving is wrong. For example, the textbooks we learn from only teach us the side of the Englishmen, perhaps to cover up the not so heroic side of the Pilgrims? If you look back with the “common sense” we have now, we would have known it was the Native Americans we should’ve been thanking, not God. Even though what really happened was traumatic for the Wampanoag. History is always written by the winners, so when someone is in search of the truth they may want to get the story from the other side also.

“For when textbook authors leave out the warts, the problems, the unfortunate character traits, and the mistaken ideas, they reduce heroes from dramatic men and women to melodramatic stick figures. Their inner struggles disappear and they become goody- goody, not just merely good.” (Loewen, pg. 29). “Lies My Teacher Told Me” is a non- fiction book written by author, American sociologist, and historian, James W. Loewen. The popular belief is that schools buy the textbook that best fits the curriculum, and by following these textbooks, students are learning to the best of their ability. However, Loewen challenges this belief by providing evidence from eighteen different American history textbooks. He believes that people in history should not be depicted as heroes when they simply are not. To continue, Loewen states that students find history to be so boring since they can not relate to it or the people in it. On page 354, he even concludes his book by stating, “Students will start finding history interesting when their teachers and textbook stop lying to them.”

A benevolent lie is when someone tells a lie, but not with the intentions of harming anyone in the process but to help the person to whom it is told. This type of lie is better known as the harmless little white lie. After reading chapter three I have concluded that to many unconscious benevolent lies are told at my house. Learning about this topic pointed out how often it happens without notice, for example my little girl just lost her front teeth and asked me if she will look pretty for her school pictures. My reply was “You’re going to be the most beautiful girl in the world!” Which she is beautiful to me no matter what but not to the world. I have told her the tooth fairy is real leaving money under her pillow in exchange for each tooth she loses. Also guilt for the story about Santa and how he gives presents when she’s been good or no presents if she’s been bad that year. This benevolent lie is to benefit me I guess to threaten her when she misbehaves. Another example is my second born goes around saying she is my favorite child so, I just agree that she is my favorite child but not to tell her sisters so their feeling won’t get hurt. They’re all my favorite in their own special little way not just her. These benevolent lies just keep coming. This one my oldest daughter had a pet fish that she cared for. The fish recently died so I had to replace it before she came home. She noticed it looked a little different and asked if I noticed anything dissimilar. I replied, “No

Deception According to Hyman (1989) deception implies that an agent acts or speaks so as to induce a false belief in a target or victim. Deception can occur in everyday life. Whether it is telling someone they look nice or not telling them that they look fat. This is an important process for forming relationships and general social interaction.

We are told from a very young that we should tell the truth, and that lying is wrong; an immoral action which we should not engage in. Yet lying is a large part of daily life, whether it be our lying to others or others lying to us, around us, or lying in ways that affect our lives. Oftentimes, the lies we tell are for social gain; for the purposes of esteem, affection, or respect. We lie as a way to manage others impressions of us. Studies have found that women are generally more intimate in their interactions, which would suggest that they lie less. However, might women lie more to benefit others, as opposed to self-centered lies? A study by DePaul et al. (1996) set out to answers questions about the frequency of lying, types of lies told,

Self deception is the process or fact of misleading ourselves to accept as true or valid what is false or invalid. Self deception, in short, is a way we justify false beliefs to ourselves. There is no doubt that sometimes we are not realistic. Not all of our actions are rational or intentional. Sometimes we avoid reality, we deny the truth, and we fool ourselves. In some cases we may see the world the way we want to, and not the way it is. Self deception raises basic questions about the nature of belief and the relation of belief to thought, desire, and will.

The above lines were quoted by Albert Einstein which states the importance of ways of knowing in gaining knowledge. It also emphasizes the utilization of other ways of knowing in different areas of knowledge.

     Law should govern the deceptive and unethical practices of deep linking and framing against an author's express wishes. Deep linking refers to linking to a file deep within another Web site, bypassing the front page and any intermediate pages. Inline linking refers to referencing material on an original Web site, including but not limited to images, video, or music, so that the material appears as part of the derivative site. Framing, unless otherwise specified, refers to the use of frames to pull content from another website, possibly a competing website. Primarily, the issue of framing concerns use of content as a source, not as a mere reference for further

Socrates is a man of great controversy. He has been portrayed as many different personalities such as a sophist to a great philosopher to just a vocal old man. The true nature of Socrates is to be questioned. He spoke his thoughts on life and what his philosophy on life was. A couple arguments that he spoke about really stood out about lying. These arguments had brute force and were made very clear through his dialogue. According to his dialogue, he felt that there were two different types of lies.

What are lies? A lie is defined as follows: To make a statement that one knows to be false, especially with the intent to deceive. There are several ways that lies are told for instance, there are white lies, lies of omission, bold faced lies, and lies of exaggeration. No matter what type of lie that one chooses to tell many people believe that lies do more harm than good.

According to Robert Braul “Every lie is two lies, the lie we tell others and the lie we tell ourselves to justify it.” So, is it okay to tell white lies? Do you tell white lies for your own sake? Why do you lie even though you know that no matter how big or small your lie is, it is still considered as immoral? Well, according to an article entitled “Tell White Lies (Occasionally)” there are 3 possible reasons why people lie and I agree with the author. I agree with Donald W. McCullough that it is okay to tell white lies when we know that it isn’t the right time, place, and way to tell the truth that sometimes we lie to protect ourselves and not to protect other people, and that we should be careful with the words we say.

Lies. According to Dictionary.com, a lie is a false statement with deliberate intent to deceive, an intentional untruth, a falsehood. Oh how the make it sound so bad! But what Dictionary.com doesn’t realize is that it is nearly impossible for people to live a life without telling a single lie. I think it’s even unhealthy… One must at one point in their circle of life tell a lie.