Why History Textbook Is Considered Boring Summary

After reading this chapter of Lies My Teacher Told Me, the reader finds out information that is shocking and completely different compared to what they have been taught. Not to mention it makes sense. Ideas have either been falsified or twisted into something that is not entirely true. History textbooks really do leave out the information or give the wrong information, that could really make history more enjoyable and interesting for its

This book displays how our futuristic world would be without all the books in the world being accessible to us. “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture; just get people to stop reading them.” The destruction of books shows how the authoritative people are trying to manipulate their nation’s thoughts and the past. ‘We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the constitution says. But everyone made equal… a book is a loaded gun in the house next door.” This quote from Beatty indicates that they do not want their people to know about history and they want everyone to see the same things, hear the same things, and do the same things. These characters all believed in living the same lives oblivious to the world before them.

“A book is a loaded gun in the house next door...Who knows who might be the target of the well-read man?” ( Pg.58) This means that since the books hold a large amount of knowledge you never know who will be exposed to it. This relates to the novel because books were hidden from everyone because if its internal value and if people were exposed to them it will begin to shift their society. This quote builds on the ideas of why people should not have access to

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

She carries the audience through her argument in a logical sequence. First, she makes her claim that student do not know history and explains her reasons (250). She then elaborates on what history students are taught and what exactly is wrong with the methods by which they learn (251). After this, she explains the job of a historian to the reader – how historians confront primary sources to “make some sense of what once happened” (252). To end the article, Simon describes how students can better learn history through exploring primary sources (253). This structuring and organization helps the reader to understand and to believe Simon’s

When it comes to American history , the credibility of our textbooks has been a problem recent years, especially those in high school. And what we are taught in class seem to be far away from our real life. Facing such an irrelevant and boring subject, most high school students have no choice but to suffer the course and struggle for it. The book Lies My Teacher Told Me may account for this phenomenon to some extent.

“For when textbook authors leave out the warts, the problems, the unfortunate character traits, and the mistaken ideas, they reduce heroes from dramatic men and women to melodramatic stick figures. Their inner struggles disappear and they become goody- goody, not just merely good.” (Loewen, pg. 29). “Lies My Teacher Told Me” is a non- fiction book written by author, American sociologist, and historian, James W. Loewen. The popular belief is that schools buy the textbook that best fits the curriculum, and by following these textbooks, students are learning to the best of their ability. However, Loewen challenges this belief by providing evidence from eighteen different American history textbooks. He believes that people in history should not be depicted as heroes when they simply are not. To continue, Loewen states that students find history to be so boring since they can not relate to it or the people in it. On page 354, he even concludes his book by stating, “Students will start finding history interesting when their teachers and textbook stop lying to them.”

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.

textbooks only discuss the important topics on what the readers should learn about history. The

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 engages me like no other subject. History is unrivaled in complexity and depth compared to other areas of study, but many do not realize this because we choose to gloss over the vast majority, reducing entire sagas into little more than a footnote on a single page. The American revolution, while celebrated in the US, is little more than a paragraph in European history, overlooked because of the more relevant Napoleonic era. My passion for learning encourages me to read into these footnotes and discover the lessons and ideas that are ignored by the common curriculum.

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

Moreover, the “‘committee concluded that the textbook doesn 't meet basic standards and guiding principles in the history profession’”. The report of the committee determined the

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

Why should high schoolers be forced to read a book that isn’t interesting to them? Often times they either do not apply to real life situations or even teach anything that a teenager would understand. So, the high schooler skims through the book and does not pay attention to any detail. High school classrooms need better books that can teach history in a fun way, and add some interesting things to which students can reflect and think on. A book read in high school, should allow the students to think critically about the text they are reading, should include some references to history, and incorporate themes that are understandable and relatable to a high school student’s life. This makes a book want to be read as well as enjoyable. The