Essay on Lies My Teacher Told Me Heroification

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.

3.) According to Howard Zinn, Christopher Columbus was wrongly portrayed as a ‘hero’, of sorts. Although he did discover America, there are quite a few significant reasons

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.

A hero is not a person with strength or a person how fight monsters. A hero is a person that inspires you to be the best you can be, a person how tells you that there is nothing in the world that you can’t do, a person how will speak to you in a different way. My hero doesn’t need strength or able to fight monster, but their able to change your life in a different way. My heroes inspire me to be the person I can be today and other every day. The people in my store inspire me to do thing I never want to do but they make me do it by changing my mind. The reason I picked these people because they don’t just inspire me they inspire other people to.

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

While many critics deride Hanson for being a reactionary, or wanting to undo the social progress of his generation and return America to a 1950s ideal, I purpose that through Hanson, who may be several of the previously stated pejoratives, we can see just how much the work of history has changed during the twentieth century. History from below, or as it is also known as “people’s history” is usually seen as belonging to those concerned more with social history than military, but so too is Hanson.

of slavery?” (Peter H. Gibbon). Columbus who had found America was not such the hero

When we look at back into history, there are many things that occurred in order to reach the point where were are now in our current society. There are many history lessons that teach the perspective of only one side of the story. When taking another approach when looking at historic events from the perspective of someone else, we can see a whole new outlook on how our history affected everyone involved. Howard Zinn describes these outlooks perfectly in Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress. Perhaps some of the “heroes” in history are not actually who they are made out to be.

When students are told that they are going to listen to a story about a real man in history, we automatically assume that all the information given is facts and must be completely true. I honestly questioned all the things I have learned from History textbooks and all the stories I have been told. I started to question things even outside of school such as “Are fruits really good for me? Are vegetables even healthy? Are textbooks being wrong to fool with the students? When I found out why Mr. A “read” from the book, that honestly messed with me through the whole day and really haunts me to this day. It was a serious wake-up

Robert Kiyosaki stated, “French fries kill more people than guns and sharks, yet nobody 's afraid of French fries.” inferring that people are only afraid of what causes immediate danger or disturbance. What we refer to as “history” causes such disturbances, proving that we live with the scars we choose to show by our everyday decisions based on our past everyday mistakes, so by editing our recorded history to all facts, the gates of perception will cleanse everything. Those following theses false stories in “history” live in ignorance which is deceitful bliss and when an individual doesn’t know reality they have no choice but to relish in lies. James Loewen highlights this clear case of living in ignorance throughout the novel Lies My Teacher Told Me, analyzing how our history is taught from perspectives rather than the total truth which creates false heroes and eliminates other perspectives to a situation, here we see reality versus the perception.

In my opinion, history books are very biased towards the “heros” of the stories. They prefer to indulge in the victories and failures, which were facts before the book, then were exaggerated greatly so the book would be interesting to the readers. Obviously they can be mostly trusted as they do contain many facts, but we shouldn’t just read it and not question the book itself. This quote helps prove that history and its books are very biased: ‘“It’s a shock to go back and read the original documents and see that all the mean things they say about Columbus are true,” Bushman says. “He was a terrible figure really, who somehow became an idealized symbol for a nation. It’s simply remarkable how these things happen in history.”’ Even the people

The author begins to talk about Harvard Historian, Samuel Morison. Morison had a different way of conveying history compared to your average history text book. As Zin puts it that one can lie about the past or tell facts that lead to conclusions found as unacceptable then concluding that Morison does neither (8). Which means that Samuel tells the truth and only the truth about his subject. Which provides an interesting take on retelling history based on how it’s told. That way is by stating facts of

yourself or others that you really know is not true. For example; you are seen

History is almost always written by the winners. As a result, the details of pivotal historical events are often washed as to prevent the dirty, less flattering details to rise to the surface. It is why we need books such as “Lies My Teacher Told Me.” by James W. Loewen to uncover and expose the propogandic style teachings of high school textbooks. In his book, he has detailed his writings that are intended to elicit a thought-provoking question- is our curriculum geared toward immortalizing the great achievements of our nation while keeping the dark, checkered deeds hidden? That is the purpose of his dogma, and this analysis we will uncover what exactly happened that prompted Loewen to release such an argumentative book, as well as weather or not he is right.

In the play The Miracle Worker the main characters Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan both go through tremendous character development. Helen, in particular, becomes a whole new person practically, a better version of herself. Without the help of her devoted teacher Annie, Helen would have stayed the overindulged uneducated little girl; instead of blossoming into the knowledge hungry beaming young women.