Lies My Teacher Told Me
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Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen is a critical review of twelve popular American history textbooks which concludes that textbook authors propagate factually false, eurocentric, and mythologized views of history. It is the winner of the 1996 American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship.
Loewen proposes that when history teachers elevate American historical figures to the status of heroes, they unintentionally give students the impression that these figures were part of an unattainable past. In other words, the history-as-myth method teaches students that America's greatest days are behind it. If textbooks and teachers were honest about historical controversies and the flaws of our nation's heroes, Loewen proposes that students would be left with the impression that America is a nation forever learning and improving and that its best days are still to come. Loewen suggests history text books should rely more heavily on primary sources.
The twelve textbooks Loewen considers are:
- The American Adventure (1975)
- American Adventures (1987)
- American History (1982)
- The American Pageant (1991)
- The American Tradition (1984)
- The American Way (1979)
- The Challenge of Freedom (1990)
- Discovering American History (1974)
- Land of Promise (1983)
- Life and Liberty (1984)
- Triumph of the American Nation (1986)
- The United States -- A History of the Republic (1991)
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- Loewen, James. W., Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong (1996), ISBN 0-684-81886-8.
