Patrick Watson's The Death Of History Is Bunk

It is important to remember to children do not stop learning history when they finish their time at primary school. Maintained secondary schools follow the NC which maintains that all children will continue to learn history by means of the KS3 History Programmes of Study (2013). Therefore it is important to prepare children for more challenging and precise history learning. New topics shall be introduced so it is important children have the skills to ‘identify significant events, make connections, draw contrasts, and analyse trends’ (p.72). It is, furthermore, defined that pupils will ‘pursue historically valid enquiries including some they have framed themselves’ (p.72). This indicates towards children becoming independent critical thinkers, a valuable quality to have in adult

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.

The book, Lies My Teacher Told Me, begins with an introduction in which author James W. Loewen empathizes with the students. He discusses how History, specifically American History, is taught incorrectly. Loewen is able to share his understanding of why high school students think history is boring. He begins his argument with facts and numbers by saying that out of all the subjects in school, history is almost every student's least favorite subject. He goes on to say that teachers also misrepresent history to students by teaching history as a ¨set of facts¨ rather than ¨showing how we got to this point.¨ Loewen’s writing style is much more relaxed than a typical non-fiction

Students are often uninterested in learning about history because the history presented in class only represent a partial account of events. All history, including America’s history, is dotted progress and accomplishments but also with immense violence and actions that call into question the morality of human nature. With this in mind, the American History taught in high school is vaguely reminiscent of the events that actually transpired. Positive events are emphasized while the negative aspects are often downplayed or even dismissed in order to preserve the good image that society so desperately wants to retain and such actions promote ethnocentrism. Books often ignore the flaws of historic figures to preserve the integrity of their image and take a non-confrontational stance on events tainted with

A more pressing matter is that of the history in the classroom. With the one sided history being instructed to Native students bring a message that “Their history does not matter,” alienation begins to form and all motivation soon leaves the students (Laura).

As the professor James W Loewer, author of the book, referred that Americans have lost touch with their history. Our teachers and textbooks play important roles in our history study. However, it is their eliding and misrepresenting factoids that have been obstacles in our history studying. Because access to too much errors and distortion, many Americans can hardly understand the past of the country. As a result, we lack the ability to reflect on what’s going on right now and in the future.

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

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.

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.

The students are right; the textbooks are boring, and they find American history in general is so “boring”.(pg.13) Everything in all the textbooks are already solved; the literature in the textbooks have no suspense; there is no drama to keep the students intertwined in the textbooks. “No wonder the

History is often fabricated and told in a way that is appealing to youth and descendants. History is often told from “white eyes” Loewen suggest that it be told through red eyes to provide true insight in what has formed our country. “One does not start from point zero, but from minus ten” (Loewens 93). High School students are presented information in a biased way. Students are not always taught how to view a situation through another perspective. Students are only able to view a situation based on how they have lived or what they know best. When teaching history of the world teachers often teach harsh situations from the past in ways that are fabricated. “If we look Indian history squarely in the eye, we are going to get red eyes” (Loewen 95). In this statement Loewen suggest that if a reader looks at a situation “squarely” the reader will develop “red eyes” that open the reader up to reality of our decedents and the

History can be an intricate and laborious subject to teach and learn. James W. Loewen, author, historian, and sociologist, is the perfect example of someone who appreciates the subject in all aspects, but knows how underestimated it is. As he says in Lies My Teacher Told Me, “Our educational media turn flesh-and-blood individuals into pious, perfect creatures without conflicts, pain, credibility, or human interest” (Loewen 11). Throughout the book, he further elucidated the idea of that quote by introducing particular topics that deserved more details and acknowledgement. Loewen argues with enough reasoning from numerous textbooks that the writers aren’t involving all facts that should be included to inform the students. Nearly all points

Never was I taught my ancestor’s side of the story until high school. Never have I heard of the Joseon Dynasty, Kublai Khan, or Qin Shi Huang, the history that was my forefather’s life. I always knew Columbus’s achievements as the discoverer of America, but I was not taught his abhorrent treatment to the Native Americans. I was told about the British royal family founded by Alfred the Great, but they never mentioned about the Japanese emperor. I was forced to memorize the facts from a Western-based history textbook, but never have they told me to remember even one date of the Vietnamese, Indian, Chinese, or Japanese history.

An English teacher, Benjamin Dancer states in his article, Censoring American History, “History curriculum, a framework written by the College Board and taught in high schools across the country. The framework was revamped this year and has taken heat from the Republican National Committee, which claims it “emphasizes negative aspects of our nation’s history”. There are positive and negative aspects of every nation’s history, students are not in the position to pick and choose which historical events are taught in schools. By picking and choosing historical events that are only positive and practical to what students want to believe, history will be lost and replaced with fraudulent and bogus events that never took

What is History? This is the question posed by historian E.H. Carr in his study of historiography. Carr debates the ongoing argument which historians have challenged for years, on the possibility that history could be neutral. In his book he discusses the link between historical facts and the historians themselves. Carr argues that history cannot be objective or unbiased, as for it to become history, knowledge of the past has been processed by the historian through interpretation and evaluation. He argues that it is the necessary interpretations which mean personal biases whether intentional or not, define what we see as history. A main point of the chapter is that historians select the facts they think are significant which ultimately