Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen

The book promises "everything your American history textbook got wrong," but in fact the author winds up offering that your American history textbook got *everything* wrong. This is illustrated, not by listing all the mistakes, but a short and insightful sampling of them. Loewen is convinced that the mistakes are much more serious than simply inducing us to lose games of Trivial Pursuit.

Loewen examines twelve American history textbooks, including two using innovative teaching methods, and ten books used in grades ranging from seventh through first year college. His conclusion amounts to a devastating indictment of how American history, and possibly any subject bearing on our perception of ourselves is taught.

Everything, from Thanksgiving, to the cause of the Civil War, to Helen Keller, to pervasive archtypes of the American character, seems to be shrouded in myth and legend. Loewen writes entertainingly to expose some of the myths and legends, presenting primary and secondary historical sources to support his conclusions. Again and again he shows how the textbooks he has surveyed are abysmally inadequate in bringing even a hint of these matters to the attention of students.

History was brought into the classroom on the insistence of ideological pressure, Loewen tells us, and ideological pressure may have ensured that the history that *is* taught is largely useless to us. In fact, he suggests, because of the way it is being taught, most students resist learning it; in part because students can tell when a story doesn't make sense, and in part because much of this history, he argues, is so anglocentric as to be patently offensive to most minority groups, including American Indians, African Americans, Latinos, and even women.

Admittedly, some of this argument sounds farfetched. And some of Loewen's myths and legends may appear to be minor points to those trained to think in terms of which president signed what bill in what year. But Loewen points out that this way of teaching history leaves out the connection between the governed and their government, and leads to essentially bad citizenship by discouraging participation. The points that Loewen concerns himself with are, he says, what connects events and people, and what allow history to make sense. Leaving them out, distorting them, or outright lying about them robs us of a hardwon heritage: the lessons of our past.

Loewen warns, in his words, that he still unknowingly accepts "all manner of hoary legend as historical fact." Instead of looking to him or others like him to arbitrate the contents of our history books, he suggests that we must learn to ask searching questions ourselves. What is the context of the story - what is the speaker trying to accomplish? Who is the speaker, and what is the speaker's vested interest in the story? Are there other points of view? Is the story internally consistent? Do the participants' actions make sense? Are there independent sources that back up the story? How are we supposed to feel about the story?

After reviewing a ...