Lies My Teacher Told Me

Last week, I finished reading Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen. First published in 1995, the book analyzes twelve common high school American history textbook in regards to both the actual facts presented as well as the way in which the history is presented.

The opening volley of the text uses history textbook treatment of Christopher Columbus's voyages to condemn the textbooks as Euro-centric by pointing out the ways in which they omit certain facts, distort other facts, and (in some cases) invent undocumented facts. Most of the rest of the book follows this same pattern. There is also a breakdown of the process of "heroifcation" that takes place in textbooks, in which historical figures are presented as unblemished and ideal, rather than the flawed figures that they are. For example, the book points out that while most history textbooks mention Helen Keller overcoming her blindness and deafness, but not a single one mentions that she became a noteworthy radical socialist.

One of the more interesting chapters (actually, pair of chapters) discusses the disappearance of race (both racism and anti-racism) in American history textbooks. There is little to no mention of the history of explicit racism which saturates American history. In doing so, then, the textbooks prevent students from understanding complex historical figures. For example, the abolitionist John Brown is always presented as being a lunatic when, in fact, he was a highly intellectual person. But to discuss his intellect would reveal to the students that he spent much of his time arguing against racism, which is a taboo subject, so the students are only given a simplistic view of the man, which prevents them from truly understanding his motivation.

It is also funny Loewen points out how textbook authors strategically use the passive voice in writing, which effectively prevents students from seeing any causality in history. For example, he cites one textbook which, in discussing the Korean War, claims simply that "in June, 1950, war broke out" without any discussion of how the war broke out or what caused the conflict.

The title is a bit misleading because the book really condemns the American history textbook publishing industry and state textbook adoption methods (of which teachers are only a small part). But I guess a title along the lines of "Lies My American History Textbook Presented Me With and Which the State Textbook Adoption Board Approved, Making Them Complicit in My Miseducation" would have been a bit clunky.