Lies My Teacher Told Me : Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong 1st Edition

Over the last two years I have attempted to build a good reputation on Amazon through offering honest reviews of material that I read. This one is difficult to write about as either way negative or positive will result in negative votes. Before scoring me negatively for rating the book at 4 stars hopefully you will give me a chance to explain my rationale and list both the positive and negative aspects of this book. As a history teacher I think this book has immense value serving to highlight important issues that history teachers have to take into account. While I do not agree with everything Mr Loewen says (and I don't think he wants me to) I found the basic concept of the book to be useful.

One of my friends has cited this book as a list of "leftist talking points." In one respect that is a fair analysis. Much of the concerns that Loewen expresses might be expected to be discussed by teachers with a liberal mindset. Global warming, class discrimination, anti-colonialist sentiments, and incessant talk of exploitation are just a few of the things one might expect to hear about from a democrat running for office. The fact of the matter is that while Loewen has attempted to deny this he does not help his cause in this new edition. It would be easy to say that Loewen finds himself infrequently at odds with Conservative values even though he sees himself as something of a moderate. Unfortunately, the political nature of his discussion has a polarizing effect at times and anchors him on one side of the fence.

His strong denunciation of George W. Bush serves to clearly show his political allegiance. While I am certainly no fan of Mr. Bush's policies I was not exactly sure that he was presenting him in a clear and objective manner. At times I think that Mr. Loewen allows his political passions to cloud his objectivity in reviewing topics he feels passionate about. For example: he wants to denounce the Vietnam War and trudge up war crimes committed by U.S. soldiers. This is not an issue that I am willing to contest but I would like to say that in spite of this he fails to talk about war crimes committed against soldiers. My Father was there and remembers well the fear of a small child who may come up at any time strapped with explosives. I think that while we are certainly guilty it should be remembered that this is not just a feature of U.S. policy but rather an ugly aspect of war.

Nevertheless, despite this there is a genius to this book. First of all, we are never told that Loewen agrees with everything he says. In one place he cites a review that referred to him as a socialist and then goes on to say that his real views of capitalism might surprise the reviewer. There are things that he says about Christianity for example that fly in the face of liberal sentiments. His perspective on John Brown uniquely pointed out that John Brown is crazy not because of his psychological status but because of his ideological perspective. Brown acted on what he believed was the "biblical" thing to do and now history judges him severely. In the final section he denounces the idea that the power elites are controlling the information and believes it is just not that simple. While he does acknowledge a level of class oppression he believes history books and lessons are controlled by different forces. This certainly flies in the face of leftist ideology about the elite. All of this raises questions as to the genuine motives of Loewen. Is he a liberal shoveling leftist propaganda or is he playing 'devil's advocate?'

I believe while he is a moderate liberal this is not his main goal. I think the point of the book is to be provocative for the purpose of generating listeners. The title itself "Lies my Teacher Told Me" is meant to have a shock value! In a way, Mr. Loewen wants you to get mad and he wants to derail the reader off his or her little train tracks. The point of the book is to dispose of naive history that is propagated through faulty textbooks. Loewen believes there are a lot of colors in the story and he wants to make sure that you noticed them. The point is to teach us to try and cultivate multiple sets of eyeballs and leave behind our own self-caused ignorance so we can know. Loewen is not seeking to shame us although a little shame does not hurt from time to time. Loewen wants us to see that "the antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honesty and inclusivism."

The main arguments of this book are as follows: First, Loewen believes that rote memorization and naive historical narrative creates a "disney view" of history that does not foster a coherent and useful view of social life. Secondly, he argues that presenting history with "warts" and all is the most effective way to help young people make sense out of a complicated world. He argues that presenting ourselves and our culture as the "international good guy" is harmful fostering prideful nationalism and promoting imperialistic viewpoints that blind us when we are doing wrong to others. He believes that the real catalyst for this or at the biggest symptom of the problem is the textbook. Textbooks have glaring problems with all of this and are often written by people who have little to no background in history. Ghost writers write them and names are basically rented to put on the front to make it seem credible. Loewen wants the authors who lend their names to know what goes out under their names and he wants teachers to make sure their students get the full account.

All in all this book was worth reading and I would recommend it to anyone. Do I agree with everything this man said? No but I appreciate what he was doing. Challenging people makes them mad and if you don't believe that then keep reading the other reviews. However challenging people makes them think. If all they do is study and solidify their position at least it is solidified. However, naive acceptance of half-truths is not the way to move our students towards civic and social competence in an ever changing world.

History was one of my favorite subjects when I was a student. How did my town, my state, my country develop from settlement to today? Even as a preteen in the sixties I blamed my local school district for selecting dull, cautious textbooks and using them so long that they were laughably out of date. In 1970 our books stopped at World War 2, and class ran out of time at World War 1. Now I see why my children's high school History teachers did not emphasize the textbooks.
Lies My Teacher Told Me examines dozens of falsehoods and inaccuracies common to current textbooks. It's a valuable study of the field for teachers, parents, and students, however I cannot rate it more highly because the unrelenting tone of scolding made it exhausting to finish.

The writer's premise is that much of the history that is taught in school is sanitized and glorified. Like many other facets of our lives, most elements of history are complex. We tend to look at individuals in history as heroes or villians. As we know in most of our lives, people do some very good things and usually end up doing some not so good things. So, for example, Christopher Columbus led what became the first of many trips from Europe to North America where settlers made permanent roots. That is noteworthy. He also captured natives and made them slaves. Not so good. I agree with the author that a fuller recounting of history would be beneficial to students. Native Americans, Aztecs, Incas, and many other groups had thriving civilizations in the Americas that Europeans essentially destroyed. It would be good to know about those civilizations that we in America are built on. Ultimately, the settling of North and South America by European immigrants had a similar path to colonization that occurred in Africa, Asia, and many islands. I concur with the author that we should learn the complexities of our history as we study. We should also teach the truth. The one shortfall of the book, in my opinion, is that 'facts' that are refuted by the author are sometimes replaced with suppositions, estimates, and best guesses of historical writers. Since there weren't video cameras and microphones present for many centuries, we have to rely on what writing was left behind and some oral traditions. Thus, there are limitations on what we can truthfully list as 'truth' and 'lies'. This makes it difficult to accurately replace folklore in our history books with facts. To me it's kind of like space exploration. I don't think many get upset when some new discovery in space makes older thinking obsolete. We learn and then we adapt our beliefs. The same should be true as we learn more about our history.