Classics Corner: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen; Definitive Book on Learning and Teaching American History in High School
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
If you thought, or still think, your high school American History class and textbooks were boring, chances are you are not alone. James W. Loewen discovered his college freshman didn't know any more about history than they did in high school.
To remedy this situation, Loewen studied high school history textbooks such as The Land of Promise, Rise of the American Nation and discovered feel-good blandly written history that focused on jingoism and patriotism and had very little analysis or depth. Loewen's book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong aimed to discover those errors and improve on the way American History is taught in schools.
"Textbooks.....keep students in the dark about the nature of history, " Loewen wrote. "History is furious debate informed by evidence and reason. " Loewen's brilliant and insightful book challenges how history textbooks are written and provides the Reader with an alternative approach to history. Even the Readers that may not necessarily agree with the information Loewen provides will appreciate the more thoughtful, critical, and analytical approach to history and receive a deeper understanding of the American past.
Loewen begins by discussing heroification, making heroes and demigods out of historic figures. History students may know of Helen Keller's childhood in which Annie Sullivan taught her to sign and speak, but may be unaware of Keller's adulthood in which she became an ardent Socialist.
Woodrow Wilson is described in textbooks as an idealistic President who helped found the League of Nations, but the books often leave out Wilson's racism in which he segregated the federal government, propositioned the Espionage Act which ordered Americans to report "suspicious activities" like speaking out against WWI, and ordered invasions of various Latin American and island countries.
"Denying students the humanness of Keller and Wilson and others keeps students in intellectual immaturity, "Loewen wrote. "It might be called a Disney version of history: The Hall of Presidents at Disneyland similarly presents our leaders as heroic statesmen not imperfect human beings. "
Loewen put the textbooks to task for how they wrote about many of the standards in American History. Christopher Columbus is not written as an intrepid explorer looking for new trade routes to the Far East. Instead, he is seen by Loewen as an opportunist who saw a country rich with gold to plunder and people to enslave.
Far from being the deus ex machina-kindly Indians who provided the Pilgrims with the first Thanksgiving, instead Massasoit's tribe once thrived in the Massachusetts area and had been all but wiped out by smallpox brought on by white immigrants.
Loewen suggests that the Thanksgiving meal was not just a gesture of friendship but a plea for survival. (And how did the Pilgrims' descendants reward that kindness? Well Loewen writes that they declared war on the local tribes and took their land for themselves.)
Speaking of Native Americans, Loewen fills his Readers on wars the whites have declared on Native Americans such as King Phillip's War in 1675 as well as textbooks' portrayal of Native Americans as either bloodthirsty savages who made unprovoked attacks on whites or childlike innocents who were unaware of how to cultivate their land and needed the White Saviors to guide them.
African-Americans have it bad if not worse according to Loewen. The textbook perspective of the Antebellum South as an idyllic Paradise for masters and slaves and Reconstruction as a time of thieving Northern "carpetbaggers" and naive freed slaves who couldn't lead their farms or states is less out of historic primary sources than out of Gone With The Wind. In actuality Loewen writes that in the post-Civil War days many former slaves were elected into offices and performed in jobs admirably. In fact the real troubles were usually performed by the disgruntled former Confederates who formed the Ku Klux Klan and whose actions would later create Jim Crow Laws and the Myth of the Fallen South.
Loewen also cites the implied racism in how textbooks portray white abolitionists such as John Brown as "being insane"(when he was devoted to the cause of freeing slaves) and Abraham Lincoln as being indifferent to the cause of slavery solely for preserving the Union (when in reality he felt that the Union could never be preserved if half of its population where in chains).
The chapters about racism should be used as a guide for current issues. Loewen's book reveals that unfortunately the Myth of the Fallen South and the inherent racism that goes with it are still with us even now in 2020. If nothing else, the fight over taking down or leaving alone Confederate statues and the support and disagreements towards the Black Lives Matter protests reveal that those historical myths are still with us and are unfortunately very hard to die. Those struggles are still fresh in our minds and despite what some say, people cannot easily "get over them." If they aren't acknowledged or certain minorities are still treated poorly, partly because modern white people used glamorized versions of the Old West or the Antebellum South as justifications for stereotyping and continuing to treat Native Americans and African Americans so horribly.
Besides race, another issue that Lies My Teacher Told Me opens up is social class.This chapter reveals that George Carlin's often repeated quote "They call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it" is not too far off. As Loewens pointed out, we are surrounded by symbols of class and social structure from the homes we live in, to the clothes we wear, to the brands we buy, to the cars we drive. Unfortunately, social class cuts deeper as while Americans are so fond of repeating the "Land of Opportunity" myth ad nauseum, that they fail to notice and history classes fail to teach that those opportunities are not passed out freely nor are those opportunities necessarily based on merit. Many stumbling blocks to achieve a higher economic standards are often affected by someone's race, nationality, economic standards, or gender.
In schools teachers and textbooks are fond of the rags to riches myths such as Andrew Carnegie, Oprah Winfrey, or Steve Jobs, and fail to account that they are the exceptions. For every Carnegie who became a multimillionaire, there are countless others who work just as hard and barely eke out a living. These exceptions cause snobbishness in people that assume if someone is poor then they must be lazy or are not working hard enough. This rationale is often why many social and welfare programs are cut leading to increased poverty.
Education for example is not the same in every school. Wealthier students have the luxury of new technology, equipments, and pre college courses, while poorer students often have to make do with dated materials and hopes that they can get a scholarship or financial aid. It makes one wonder with the Coronavirus pandemic being such an issue if schools were able to pass out enough technology for students to study at home and whether teachers and students had the proper Internet access to use them. Not to mention, the most recent controversies about schools being forced to open in the fall will see a division between the schools that can afford to follow guidelines and use work and study at home alternatives and those that can't. Will the numbers of poorer students and faculty members catching the virus increase because of the lack of alternate options?
The most eye-opening chapters discuss the impact the Federal Government and Big Business had on modern history.
Loewen says that avoiding the role economics play in United States-International relations interferes with the textbooks' "international good guy approach." The United States's official word on interfering with other foreign countries is to "spread democracy", but Loewen's book shows that Capitalism and economics are the actual driving forces.
One example of this approachs is when International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) led the U. S government in destabilizing Salvador Allende's Socialist Chilean government. Other examples include Union Carbide in India and United Fruit in Guatemala.
Many of the United States' gave support in other countries, particularly in Central and South American and Middle Eastern countries and not necessarily for the good of the people. Such examples include returning the shah of Iran to his throne in 1953, bringing down the elected government in Guatemala in 1954, attempting to bring down Fidel Castro's government through terror and sabotage and many many more.
These decisions often led to generations of tyranny and dictatorships and citizen led rebellions against not only their leaders but hatred towards the United States, often taking the form of terroris organizations and cartels. Also the deplorable conditions that these countries were left in because of United States interference caused many of these people to leave and emigrate to the United States.
The book predates the recent controversies towards asylum seekers and young immigrant children separated from their families, kept in cages, and many of them found to have disappeared, perhaps in the hands of unscrupulous adults. However, one cannot help but read the chapter and understand the United States's role in creating the unstable governments and low socioeconomic standards that those people are emigrating from.
Equally powerful is the approach or rather non-approach many textbooks have in portraying the Vietnam War. Of the textbooks surveyed, Loewen said most devoted less than 10 pages to Vietnam and only depicts photographs of smiling American soldiers leaving out the most provocative memorable images like the running girl covered in napalm. In fact, Loewen says that most high school teachers leave out the Vietnam War in discussions. (Recalling my own history classes, I only remember discussing the Sixties once and that was a brief end of year talk on the music. )
While the Vietnam War was a recent event for the book, one wonders how other events are portrayed in modern history classes. While certain events like 9/11 probably could not be avoided, do textbooks refer to the U.S. interference, such as the First Gulf War, that led to such animosity in the Middle East and the creation of terrorist groups? Were the controversies about the decision go to war in Iraq and the subsequent War on Terror get a mention or was that one of the things that textbook authors left out? What about the creation of the Patriot Act and the far reaching tactics of the NSA? There are still many gray areas to explore in American History and judging by many of the attitudes that people still hold to revere or criticize the past, unfortunately they are still around.
Loewen also refers to the low prominence that history has in high school curricula of schools not hiring qualified history teachers who can study and challenge the materials. Instead the school sboards settle for social science teachers or coaches. (Anothe recall from my high school history courses: football coaches taught all our social science and history classes.) As well as the lack of experienced historians that edit and critique these books. Many of the books were published to impress the school and education boards and to make as little waves as possible. Unfortunately, as Loewens reminds us history is not like that. It is a subject that is by nature controversial and needs to be taught that way: honestly and accurately.
While the book was first published 25 years ago, it's clear the situation has not yet improved. However Loewen frequently has updated his book and has written similar ones about Historic American Landmarks.(One wonders how he feels about the statues). If blandly written "feel good" history doesn't go away, neither will Loewen and neither should people who study and know the truth behind the American History Myths.
