Research Paper On Modern American History

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

1949--> Columbus unleashed 200 troops w/ 20 on horseback to terrorize the natives b/c he was upset he couldn't govern

* These civilizations developed complex political systems and large networks of paved roads that unified the civilization Incas in Peru.

They have found that the teachers only go over what they really want to go over and leave out a lot of the important details. “Gradually they end up going through the motions, staying ahead of their students in the textbooks, covering only material that will appear on the next text.”(pg.12) College professors want the students to know most of the material; or of at least heard of most of it before they get to college. “History professors in college routinely put down high school history courses. A colleague of mine calls his survey of American history “Iconoclasm I and II,” because he sees his job as disabusing his charges of what they learned in high school. In no other field does this happen. Mathematics professors, for instance, know that non-Euclidean geometry is rarely taught in high school, but they assume that Euclidean geometry was mistaught. Professors of english literature don’t presume that Romeo and Juliet was misunderstood in high school.”(pg.12)

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

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.

1a. According to Loewen’s introduction, high school students hate history because nobody expects much from it. Many people are bored of history because we already know the ending of all the textbook’s “stories.” The textbooks have a monotone voice, and are technically clones of each other. Apparently history professions do not even review the textbooks in order to check if they have any historical mistakes in them. Also the authors of the textbooks wrote in them like there are still no debates about any of the topics, so students are not meant to question history. The textbooks are written through “white eyes” so they are biased and full of nationalism. Textbooks do not include

There are so many fascinating events in the world's history. There is World War I, The Holocaust, World War II, and so many more. There are supplementally so many intriguing events in the Amalgamated States History such as Revolutionary War, Slavery, Native American wars and so many more. One of the most intriguing event in the World and Amalgamated States History has to be World War II.

The history of the United States began with the settlement of Indigenous people before 10,000 BC. Numerous cultures formed. The arrival of Christopher Columbus in 1492 started the European colonization of the Americas. Most colonies formed after 1600. The Spanish built small settlements in Florida and the Southwest, and the French along the Mississippi River and the Gulf Coast. By the 1770s, thirteen British colonies contained 2.5 million people along the Atlantic coast east of the Appalachian Mountains. After the end of the French and Indian Wars in the 1760s, the British government imposed a series of new taxes, rejecting the colonists' argument that new taxes needed their approval . Tax resistance, especially the Boston Tea Party, led

How complete are our textbooks these days? Yes, they may cover Christopher Columbus’s all the way to today’s current events. But just how complete are they? Often books tend to lean a certain direction, and offer perspective from only one point of view; most commonly the views of the victors, dominant country or possibly stories of heroes. What about the other side? Far too often the lesser of the two is left out of the textbooks and out of our minds. There are always two sides to a story, in this case, much of what we read is a mere, “partial truth”. In the following paragraphs and analysis, assumptions and generalizations we have made about our country and

To begin, a major flaw in the way American history courses are taught is due to the fact that textbooks do not allow students to form their own opinions, for everything is presented as “fact”. This is exemplified through the way early American life is taught. For example, a controversial topic is the specific destination of the Mayflower during the Pilgrim’s journey to America. Some historians believe their arrival in Massachusetts was on purpose to be far from Anglican control in Virginia, while others believe violent storms lead them off track, or there were just navigation errors. The flaw then arises for all textbooks only pick one, and present it as fact to their readers for they believe it is the students’ only way to “learn” about the past (81).

Following the Revolutionary War that lasted from 1776 to 1783, Britain’s thirteen North American colonies entered a period of great uncertainty. Finally free from the constraints of the Old World, the Founding Fathers of the United States were facing the predicament of a small population with limited resources and an unstable frontier. Though it was unclear as to how the colonies would create a New World order, most of the Founding Fathers had agreed upon a single point – that they would avoid the “balance of power” politics that had long reigned in Europe. Between the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Spanish-American War in 1898, the fledgling nation rejected “balance of power” politics and, instead, formed a federation

The ugly truth about my education was that I was not being taught the whole history of the United States. In my classes, historic tales were being told. Beginning with Once upon a time on the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria came the settlers along with their servants indentured and otherwise to Jamestown, and ending with Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights movement left gaps, no, canyons, that needed to be filled. To get a glimpse of what I had been missing in History class for the past twelve years was overwhelming, especially since it often required me to alter my thinking about my world; the events and people in it.

Writers pile obscure facts throughout their textbooks, making them appear to be comprehensive study aids. With the Internet, publishers assumed that textbooks would become more obsolete as students can have all their questions answered online. The opposite is true. Textbooks are growing at a significantly faster rate than new information about American history is even being discovered. With excessive information (and omission of certain important events), students young or old become overwhelmed by the amount of facts being thrown at them. Loewen asks, “How can students possibly be expected to know anything if they’re too busy trying to learn everything?’ Most certainly, he does not believe this course of study to be in the spirit of historical

Mrs. McPhee is not meeting any state standards that will prepare her students for the test nor next year’s material. She is simply relating history to what her students would possibly like to learn about, instead of teaching them what they need to learn about. If Dr. Gutierrez was to agree on Mrs. McPhee’s proposal, Dr. Gutierrez would face several issues as well. She would hear that her 8th grade history department was “watered down” in several different areas. This new history curriculum would not touch on the areas of elected officials, foreign affairs, and several other important pieces of history.