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

Although I learned several new points that I hadn’t known about certain times in history overall I found this book to be uninformative. I find that the American educational system although it lacks in many ways the basic ways it teaches history are very common for our country as in many others most countries want to establish a sense of nationalism in their young children and present educational history in such a manner. As an example, I don’t need to know that Washington owns slaves from kindergarten to third grade or so I am going to learn that in a short time as my educational level increases, and therefore my understanding of history as a whole. Education is finite. There are only a certain amount of days or hours teachers can present information or a lot homework even at the college level it is later as adults that we continue to learn, hopefully, and find many of these later points as we individually delve off into interest of our own for example, there’s hundreds of books written about George Washington and his life any of which I can go to on my own for that perspective of his life. I guess I am saying I’m mostly disagreed with this book premise.

Beautiful book about the hidden history in American classrooms

I was optimistic with the book as I enjoy learning about history and the hidden gems that aren't always covered in a classroom. I found the approach to be arrogant with a hint of anger in it's approach to cover the untruths we've been taught. I will say I didn't finish the book. Made it about halfway before deciding to give up on it.

I loved the additional perspective on the stories that make up our history. It is no surprise that the history we learn in school is very one sided. I think we would all benefit from a deeper understanding of our history.

“People have a right to their own opinions, but not to their own facts.” - James W. Loewen (p. 358). American history textbooks present a series of facts to be memorized. These thousand-page tomes are long-winded, boring, and largely inaccurate in an attempt to make the United States look like the ‘international good guy.’ A kind of Salvation Army to the rest of the world (p. 222). Textbook authors, who are largely farmed out after their first editions, avoid controversy and discussion in their books in an attempt to please parents, adoption boards, and publishers across party lines. In doing so, the truth gets lost because the narrative presents “a nation without sin…merely leaving students ignorant [and] unable to understand why others are upset with us.” (p. 269) After all, “to maintain a stratified system, it is terribly important to control how people think about that system.” (p. 304) The positioning of our history textbooks also fuels American students’ ethnocentrism - the belief that ours is the finest society in the world and all other nations should be like us.” (p. 268-269). But are we really the best? Have we truly done nothing wrong? “Textbooks exclude conflicts or real suspense. They leave out everything that might reflect badly upon our national character” (p. 5), from stealing land from Native Americans to lying about weapons of mass destruction. “Perhaps openly facing topics that seem divisive might actually unify Americans across racial, ethnic, and other lines” (p. 338). Reading the truth about our country’s history is uncomfortable, and while “feeling good is a human need, it imposes a burden that history cannot bear without becoming simpleminded” (p. 131). Wading into discomfort allows us to experience an emotional reaction, and “emotion is the glue that causes history to stick” (p. 342).