Essay about Analysis in James W. Loewen´s Lies My Teacher Told Me

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

When it comes to American history , the credibility of our textbooks has been a problem recent years, especially those in high school. And what we are taught in class seem to be far away from our real life. Facing such an irrelevant and boring subject, most high school students have no choice but to suffer the course and struggle for it. The book Lies My Teacher Told Me may account for this phenomenon to some extent.

High School teaching techniques are not preparing their students for College. Its believed that new case studies have found that “U.S. High Schools are teaching their core College-preparatory courses and what colleges want incoming students to know in order for them to succeed in Freshmen courses.” (Higher Education, 2007) A large role in this is that High School teachers are preparing their students for more broad skills, ideas,

“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.”

The study of history and the teaching of history has come under intense public debate in the United States in the last few decades. The “culture-wars” began with the call to add more works by non-Caucasians and women and has bled into the study of history. Not only in the study of history or literature, this debate has spread into American culture like wildfire.

James Loewen uses his piece Lies my Teacher Told Me to reveal the flaws in America’s mainstream textbooks. Loewen points out the fact that textbooks try to “indoctrinate blind patriotism” (Loewen 6) and “keep students in the dark about the nature of history” (Loewen 8). Almost every American textbook sells history using the “soft seduction” approach, as explained in Robert Greene’s book, The Art of Seduction. Textbooks try to seduce Americans into being proud of their country by making American historical figures look like heroes, like in the case of Helen Keller, Woodrow Wilson, and Christopher Columbus. “Heroification” (Loewen 11) has a

American history is taught in high schools all over the country. It is held as a core curriculum for every American student because of the importance found in teaching our youth of our “perfect nation” and our “perfect past”. However, contrary to popular belief, James W. Loewen, author of Lies My Teacher Told Me, has found American history to be taught with a completely nationalistic approach. Not only is the history of our country taught with a horribly strong patriotic sentiment, but generally with a misunderstood concept of the history of America by the writers themselves. America has never lived a lie as ruinous as that in which happens in classrooms every day.

In James Baldwin’s article “A Talk to Teachers” he utilizes paradox, tone, and anecdote to persuade the audience that an educational system where students are taught the true meaning of American history and identity must be established in order to create a society where people of all races contribute their ideals to society.

James Loewen wrote the book ?Lies My Teacher Told ME? to help the students of the United States become aware of their true history. This book attempts to show how and why American history has been taught the way it has without regard for the truth. Mr. Loewen had compared twelve different history textbooks they are: The Great Republic, The American Way, Land of Promise, Rise of the American Nation, Challenge of Freedom, American Adventures, Discovering American History, The American Tradition, Life and Liberty, The United States ? A History of the Republic, Triumph of the American Nation and The American Pageant. Loewen has argued his cases for Heroification, Euorcentrism and the first settlers, and Racism in our history. He has done

This exposure to history may potentially cause social studies teachers to retract their summer reading assignments and discuss A Glass Castle instead. Many would argue that the current summer reading assignment, Black Boy by Richard Wright, contains similar themes and also discusses bits of U.S. history. Although these people speak the truth, The Glass Castle would make a better fit for the summer reading assignment simply because students can relate more to the plot and characters. Black Boy takes places between 1912 and 1937 and The Glass Castle takes place between 1957 and 2007. Students will find more in common with the characters in Walls’ work, causing them to show more interest in the assignment. Last year, one in every nine kids did not complete the summer reading assignment. This proportion would decrease if students felt engaged and had interest in the literature. A Glass Castle instills laughter yet also warms readers’ hearts. If we read and analyze this book at the beginning of the year, students will not feel stressed out during the first few weeks of school because it contains light content and a clear narrative

I am unsure of the exact grade level this book was intended for, but after some reading and researching it is apparent that this book is intended for an upper level high school history course. There are a lot of indications that it is used widely among AP history courses and honor classes in high school. It is also used for introductory history survey courses at some colleges and universities. I feel this text is only appropriate for those two uses. I would be surprised to see this in an average junior level U.S. history class, although I think

The last problem that Loewen mentions is that American History textbooks heroify many important figures and make them seem flawless. Not only do they heroify people, but they also do this with important events, for example, Loewen argues that the first Thanksgiving “...is a myth…” and that we heroify the pilgrims that allegedly ate with the

Many Americans today are extremely uneducated and misinformed when it comes to the history of their nation purely because they find the learning of it boring. Because of the nature of American history courses and the distribution of knowledge in America, James W. Loewen wrote the book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, to make history more relevant to people who’ve been “bored to tears by their high school American history courses” (xii) because to be effective citizens today we must be able to understand our past.

It makes no sense to lie to children, and telling them one side of history is essentially lying to them. In chapter 1, “Multicultural Education: Characteristics and Goals,” having rich white males dominate the how we learn is not beneficial to explaining the true essence of the races in America. Explaining the warfare and what the white males went through, as well as only honoring holidays based on white males’ religion is “single-group studies.” I realize that yes the Founding Fathers helped to create the country and eventually the public-school system, but there is no need to do everything like they did. We should be more open to every race. This country was founded because they wanted to be free, but the only people who are free are white males. Yeah, it was democracy for that period, but we as a country need to challenge ourselves to be open making ourselves better by being open to one another. If we keep social class as an issue to learn then how free are we? I think that this country is melting pot of all sorts of races and instead of oppressing it, it should be celebrated. Once children start learning about other people’s culture they can start to create their own opinion of what is right and wrong. But the people in power, the white males, do not want that which is wrong. I cannot stress this enough, we’re all immigrants to this country. Is it because we freaking kicked Native

Why should high schoolers be forced to read a book that isn’t interesting to them? Often times they either do not apply to real life situations or even teach anything that a teenager would understand. So, the high schooler skims through the book and does not pay attention to any detail. High school classrooms need better books that can teach history in a fun way, and add some interesting things to which students can reflect and think on. A book read in high school, should allow the students to think critically about the text they are reading, should include some references to history, and incorporate themes that are understandable and relatable to a high school student’s life. This makes a book want to be read as well as enjoyable. The