Social, Cultural, Humanitarian Committee Summary

Why is there racial tension and political dissension in America? Why did Russia feel its Crimean invasion was justifiable? How did China become an economic power? These questions are answered by a proper understanding of history, helping us to better comprehend the world of 2015. Education’s role needs to be thus: to prepare students as learned individuals and to exist in such an international community. This is why I think history is still incredibly relevant despite focusing on the

In The Death of History is Bunk, Patrick Watson argues that the decrease of historical content in the curriculum does not indicate that history, as a subject, is declining. While many complain about the decreasing prominence of history classes in Canadian schools, the content of those classes is excessively dull as it consists of memorizing lists of facts. Despite this, there are still protests that knowledge of “defining events” is required to contribute to “the National Conversation”. However, history is not so simple as a list of events—it is the sum of the small happenings in society around the events. A whole variety of factors influence history, which is created by the common people. Unlike Americans, who turn to their constitution for

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Some would say society around the world as a whole has evolved into a self-serving society. Through teaching the historical events of the ancestors this may help curtail the negative attitude that is running rampant today. It is vitality important that we have scholars who will continue researching and documenting history.

With all the time in history class spent reading from textbooks, it is important that the flaws in these enormous works are pointed out, and that students and readers are made aware of the truths of history. To expose the reality of historical events to readers, the author compared accepted beliefs that high school graduates thought to be true with

In author James W. Loewen’s book Lies My History Teacher Told: Everything American Textbooks Got Wrong, it is obvious that James Loewen is very passionate about making sure that people know that not all the history they are taught is true. He also claims that the history books have false information planted in them: “The stories the history textbooks sell are predictable; every problem has already been solved or is about to be solved” (Loewen pg. 3). Loewen’s voice throughout this book is powerful, fulfilling and persuasive as he tackles the problem off false history being taught to Americans.

Every day in my middle school eighth grade social-studies classroom, I often found myself asking the questions, “Why study history; shouldn’t we let go of the past; why is studying the past important?” Oddly enough, I found my answer to these very questions in a quotation in my social studies textbook. The quote profoundly stated, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” After reading the article, “Then Came War”, the story of unjust racial prejudice against Japanese-Americans in WWII, the answer to my question finally clicked. The story of Japanese Americans in WWII has brought forth many lessons, can be applicable to prejudicial events of our time, and has explanations and the impact of racial prejudice and stereotypes.

There is a purpose behind taking history classes. The goal behind learning about history is to learn from it, to not make the same mistakes as the ones who came before, to become as advanced as possible while surpassing ancestors follies. The Chinese government tries to cast aside the knowledge of the Tiananmen Square massacre. If Tiananmen is forgotten… isn’t it more likely to happen again? Slave revolts in the United States of America were caused partially by denying Africans’ human rights and education, the more education these enslaved individuals had access to the more revolts were caused as a response to their enslavement and unfair treatment.

“History is written by the victors.” These words, spoken by Winston Churchill, have traditionally been applied to the surviving narratives of thriving empires and nations burying those of the losers. In this day and age, it must be viewed through a much finer lens. Under this lens is the Texas Department of Education, the Kanawha County Board of Education, and South Korea’s Ministry of Education. Each of the mentioned Education systems has encountered controversies surrounding their published textbooks.

In the book "Lies my Teacher Told - James W. Loewen" embarked on a journey to dismantle the common misreporting of history that traditional textbook practices. He introduces the idea that the knowledge passed down through books utilized in schools are misreporting history at the expense of students and in favors of "Settlers" to mask barbaric / inhumane territorial acts of the European as justifiable in the name of progress. He argues that this knowledge is then recycled to create new textbooks that cites the previous misreporting as sources for their study. He argues that modern day writers are consumers, instead of true disciples of the relevant disciplines such as Anthropology, ethnohistory, folklore studies etc. Chapter Four tackles and