Lies My Teacher Told Me Analysis

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

James Loewen , a professor of sociology, wrote a book named From Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, which was published in 1996. In the book, Loewen claims that the American public education system poorly teaches history. He states that this is due to appease and induce overt sense patriotism and nationalism. This leads to the information being false, misleading, boring, and Disneyfied.

Public consensus, similar to politics, varies greatly when it comes to American history, especially as it pertains to the classroom. Views about the content and historical interpretation included in history texts have reached a heightened polarization in recent years. This can be seen in the vast differences between the diatribes of Howard Zinn’s, A People’s History of the United States, and Larry Schweikart and Michael Allen’s, A Patriot’s History of the United States. While both books, prescribed by this introductory course into American History, cover many of the same topics, they clearly paint different pictures. I feel that any text seeking to represent a responsible survey of a

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

In the preamble of our current draft of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” If we are going to use this statement as well as John Locke’s ideals on Natural Rights, we cannot simply ignore slaves. They are also humans which means they, too, deserve the rights endowed by our creator. I believe that to simply ignore this error would be a huge oversight on our part that could eventually lead to problems within our country. I believe that, in order to correct this error, we must broaden our definition of “all men” to include slaves. However,

In chapter 7 from “Lies My Teacher Told Me was all about the truth behind social class and the truth of what kind of opportunities we really have in America. But not only that, its also about lies in what we are taught and what people are taught to think. This chapter pointed out why people feel and think the way they do. There was quote form the chapter that I liked because it explains that our books and what we are taught gives us the meanings of not truly understanding the truth. Even today we are blind to what the land of opportunity really stands for. “Since History textbooks present the American past as four hundred years of progress and portray our society as a land of opportunity in which folks get what they deserve and deserve what

In, A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, on page eight the author states that “a historian's distortion [of history] is more than technical, it is ideological;”. I found this statement to be true in a number of ways. It is impossible to account for every detail of history that occurred because there is too much to account for and because no one person ever knows the whole story. This allows for a margin of error when condensing history into a book. Authors can write about the same time period, but the contents can vary heavily depending on what the author deems important or unimportant and what perspective they were taught and side with. With these factors history can be told a multitude of different ways as shown in The

After reading The Betrayal of History, I realize that most information that I have learned in history classes are incorrect. I believed that the historian is the only one who rewrites events in the history books. Also, I realized the author of the book is not the only one who writes facts and historical information on the book, but it turns out that others people and organization are controlling the publishing companies, and they have the ability to edit any information and events that they do not agree with. It is weird they do not want children to learn some words like imagine because it is similar to magic.

Lies My Teacher Told Me… Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by J. Loewen, takes a closer look at American History and how high school textbooks are getting it wrong. The books opening has a message from the author on why he felt compelled to write it. Loewen argues that current history books are too complicated and full of a dizzying array of information. Yet they are also explaining history too neatly with clean facts and imparted with bland patriotism. This method, Loewen argues, reduces history to “a gray emotional landscape of pious duty” as opposed to a lively landscape of interrelated stories and events. Leading this generation of American students feeling that American history is an irrelevant and bland subject. Lies My Teacher Told Me samples from 18 top textbooks and addresses the most glaring omissions from them. Some of these events are integral to our American history and the true stories are much more interesting than their whitewashed textbook counterparts.

The novel “Lies my teacher told me everything your american history textbook got wrong” By James w. Loewe, is basically what the title states. Certain things about history that we know we learn from our textbooks that our school provides us. Im not saying that what the school is giving us is wrong. But, the textbook itself is not providing the full information. So, as i read this novel i learned certain things that i did not know before. Like if Columbus Day should actually be celebrated or not. Or more importantly the day we have an incredible feast; thanksgiving what is that really about?. After reading this book things started to get

One of the co-writers of the “Pentagon Papers” Carl Bernstein’s quote brings forth the importance of writing about the truth. In the time of the “credibility gap” of the late 60’s the discrepancy between what happened and what was said to have happened generated uneasiness between the American people and their government. Factual inconsistency has been around for centuries and can be traced back to ancient Greek historians. Greek writer Herodotus is considered to be the father of history, but upon looking at his work, The Histories, they rely on storytelling and hearsay. In contrast, Thucydides, another historian at the time, writes The History of the Peloponnesian War a historical work that focuses on factual evidence and can be seen as more

I understand the author’s stance. Despite growing up in a small, conservative military town, I did not experience the indoctrination Loewen is warning us about. In my experience, the teachers always went outside the text and incorporated materials that provided a clear, accurate picture of history. They taught us to think critically, identify bias, and

My passion for understanding historical trauma developed early on while studying at Duke University. I designed my major, focusing on narrative, human rights, and Latin America. After analyzing declassified CIA documents from the 1970s, I questioned my knowledge of U.S. history as I realized how little I knew about the U.S.’s support for the rise of dictatorships in South America. Disturbed, I began to think about gaps in my history education. I wanted to understand how students learn (or did not learn) about the hidden histories of their countries.

There were many things that caught my attention while reading “The Betrayal of History.” I was shocked when I came to know that the American history taught in our schools was modified by large publishers just to satisfy both the conservative religious right and the multicultural left. The fact that the states of Texas and California make up for 20 percent of the total textbooks sold in America immediately caught my attention. It was surprising to know that many of these textbooks have banned the words like "imagine" and "feel" to please the religious right. I already knew that the information presented in these books were biased, but I didn’t know that it was modified too. After reading this article, I realized that the information provided

For example, when learning about the Native Americans and what they went through, and how they lived, all of these books are good to get a basic background. However, some overpower the others. In the Outline of United States History there are only a very few paragraphs that explain the “Cultures of the Native Americans”. However, it does not even get into detail. It mostly only states the fact of them having a very different culture and ways than the Europeans meaning that they were not seen as civilized. In Digital History it talked about how “Naïve” and “Ignorant” the Indians where because they did not have that much knowledge on the advancement of the weapons that the Europeans had. For example, Columbus stated “I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance.” (Digital History). This is what our government wants us to know, they do not want us learning about the bad we done.