Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong.

James has no qualms using words like LIES and IRRELEVANT. What is interesting is the amount of data he brings to bear and the research material footnoted to aggravating detail. He posts many interesting questions as to why these texts are done the way they are to who is to blame. But before that he gives ten chapters of history the way it is understood by professorial historians today. To me, even with a good history teacher, it was a real eye opener. I was just floored by what I didn’t know. And what is purposely avoided by these authors of text books to give one-sided, feel good, patriotic and nationalistic views of our history.

James goes on to tell why it is bad to teach this garbage as well as to what can be done about it. One of the biggest problems with the curriculum is that it bores students and they don’t remember any of it. In other words, they don’t learn. I remember classes like that. My world history class was like that. I don’t remember my teacher’s name, either. Other problems can be disassociation with minority history because of its lack of inclusion; it may even offend some students, and can cause self-esteem problems, because the textbooks give a “white male” history.

This book was easy to read, and there was no test at the end of the book. There were 56 pages of footnotes, however, and it got aggravating to flip back and forth so much. But it is a scholarly work. So I am not really complaining. This is a good book to read even if only to counter all the bad teaching you got in high school.

Joel.

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. James W. Loewen. Touchstone. New York, NY. 1995.

Book review by Tracey
I know Joel already reviewed this book, (which made me want to read it!), and I’m not sure that I have anything pertinent to add to his words, but I’ll try.

I really enjoyed this book! I like history, although I usually stay in Europe for mine. I did have the same US history teacher as Joel. Mr. Carpenter was a fine teacher, keeping most of the class awake, and waking up the students who fell asleep on his watch. US history does tend to be dry, which is perhaps one of the reasons students find it so dull. Mr. Loewen addresses this issue, as well as many others. After reading the book for myself, I see it is no wonder that US history class is so boring to everyone. I learned much more from this one book than from the whole US history textbook I had in 11th grade! I actually read my whole class textbook and I had an interesting teacher, but I didn’t learn any of the fascinating information that Mr. Loewen presents. It has altered my perception, not particularly of our government, but of the Grand Canyon of greed that people in general possess, and the lengths they will go to cover it up and excuse it. I guess the truth really does lie in the details. I plan to keep this book in my collection, lend it out to as many people as I can, and read it again eventually.

Tracey.