Lies My Teacher Told By James W. Loewen: Chapter Analysis

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

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

James W. Loewen wrote the book “Lies My Teacher Told Me” to help students understand the past of the United States, and how it is effecting the present time. “Lies My Teacher Told Me” looks at 12 different American history textbooks, and points out the different lies, flaws, and sugar coated stories the textbooks present. Lowen explains how textbooks practice heroification, and how race and race relations are a major issue when it comes to American history. Among these topics, Lowen also sheds light on the truth about social classes in America, and how textbooks lie about the past and try to avoid the recent past all together.

"It would be better not to know so many things than to know so many

After reading The Betrayal of History, I realize that most information that I have learned in history classes are incorrect. I believed that the historian is the only one who rewrites events in the history books. Also, I realized the author of the book is not the only one who writes facts and historical information on the book, but it turns out that others people and organization are controlling the publishing companies, and they have the ability to edit any information and events that they do not agree with. It is weird they do not want children to learn some words like imagine because it is similar to magic.

The history books leave holes in our history regarding the discovery of the Americas, and the voyage around Africa; along with that the history books keep whites as the elites throughout history and establish the idea that anyone that wasn't white was a savage. History books over the years have given students the idea that the historical figures they have studied are in a sense gods. In “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” written by James Loewen, he talks about the flaws in history books and how textbooks teach students about a feel-good history, not the dark and gruesome history that is the truth. He disproves many textbooks and opens the eyes of the readers giving evidence of how the textbooks have warped history. In the first chapter of

The novel “Lies my teacher told me everything your american history textbook got wrong” By James w. Loewe, is basically what the title states. Certain things about history that we know we learn from our textbooks that our school provides us. Im not saying that what the school is giving us is wrong. But, the textbook itself is not providing the full information. So, as i read this novel i learned certain things that i did not know before. Like if Columbus Day should actually be celebrated or not. Or more importantly the day we have an incredible feast; thanksgiving what is that really about?. After reading this book things started to get

In contemporary times, listening to and preserving the stories and history around us is not as important to the world as it once was. In this semester, my class has reviewed various books, movies, video clips and, articles from present day all the way back to World War II. In the television segment, Jaywalking: A Year in Review, I learned that many people do not know about our world history. Adolf Hitler’s book, Mein Kampf, established and the documentary, Inside North Korea, taught me how restrictive government can be from the past to the future. In the television series, Band of Brothers, I learned that it is vital to listen to people’s stories because they may turn out to be true. Current dictators and the book 1984, by George Orwell, also show examples of when controlling governments go tremendously wrong. I cannot deny that there will be extreme consequences if the world does not preserve the stories and the history all around us.

Throughout our educational careers, we have been taught to trust our textbooks. They have always been a source that you can count on to get the correct answer to your question. Teachers have taught us that the textbook is always right, and that there should be no reason not to trust in it. However, all of this has been a lie. As we get older, and have a wider perspective of our society we begin to see that our textbooks have not given the entire truth.They focus on only the points and ideas of the colonizers, and leave out aspects of history that might not make them look as great as they would like to or they just do not view the idea important enough to be taught. Students should not depend on their history textbooks, for all the answers since they do not give the adequate perspective of history.

Once when I was in 7th grade, I was beaten up by my teacher when I forgot my textbook at home. Such behavior used to be legal in the country where I was raised and teachers regularly used this kind of punishment. Had this teacher read Neil Postman’s article The Fallen Angles, he would have realized how wrong he was in requiring extensive use of textbook in learning process. In his article, Postman provides a radical view in education and relates this to the role of textbooks and teachers. While Postman makes a great argument to advance his ideas to reanimate public education and make learning meaningful, it is hard to agree with his concepts such as banning textbooks, making teachers teach subjects that they are not experts in, and requesting students to learn simply by catching mistakes of others.

The author argues that, “ Why history textbook is considered boring by the high school students, and are not interested to learn about their own history.”

There are, literally, volumes written just about the politics of textbooks. The true depth of the chaos is too much to go into here. Loewen only scratches the surface when he describes the boondoggle that is the school textbook in his introduction. In an article titled “A Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education,” Tamim Ansary takes it a step further. He describes in detail what Loewen only lightly touched on.

After watching video and reading the introduction part and chapter one, from Loewen’s book I still did not understand why the leader of country do wrong things. Why leader of the country judge the people’s culture, behavior, religion and dominate them? Discrimination between culture, religion and racist effect the county. From this chapter, I like story of Helen Keller’s life. Some say she is blind and deaf, some says she was unruly, she did not had manners, but actually, she was a radical socialist. The story of Wilson also very interesting. Latin American’s are also known as Russian because of Wilson’s Invasions. Textbook authors use other sources to explain about country and people. Some books mention Wilson’s black mark on his presidency

IT’S INTERESTING to see how history is distorted in the act of grasping it: how it bends to fit the mind of the person who takes it in. You can investigate a historical epoch and watch as others, arriving at disparate conclusions, paint a portrait with a selection of colors chosen to fulfill their needs. A man is bound to feel that in the careless approach of others, he himself stands accused: is he not guilty of the same crime, of distorting history to his own ends, lacking merely the person with sufficient subtlety to call him to account?

There is an old saying that “history is written by the victors”. As victors, they possess the power to influence the world with the tale of their victory—often in government-sponsored history books, news reports, and judicial findings. However, they have a habit of distorting facts in order to benefit themselves and strengthen their ideology. As the result, history itself becomes corrupted with lies that can have a detrimental effect on society and history. As Howard Zinn puts it, “One can lie outright about the past. Or one can omit facts which might lead to unacceptable conclusions” (Zinn, 9). This is clear in the case of Billy Budd, both in the original novella written by Herman Melville and the film adaptation produced in 1962 by Peter Ustinov.