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

A brilliant analysis of what's wrong with American history textbooks,filled with interesting historical facts that deliver the brutal truth about Columbus, America's first 16th century settlers were Africans, the real cause of the American Revolutionary War, etc. Why, in addition to boring them to death, our current approach to teaching history corrupts students and leaves them ill-equipped to achieve modern social, political, economic and ecological solutions using the past for modeling. America's history textbooks only celebrate white, upper class achievements -- perpetuating a feeling of worthlessness among racial minorities and the poor. Throughout our history, American governments and Presidents are shown as positive, caring, hopeful, and well-meaning. Which, of course, leads educators into a deadly trap, as the students mature and begin to understand from outside sources that they are being lied to by teachers whom they should be able to trust. Why there was a war in Vietnam doesn't appear in high school history texts, but it does appear as a subject in popular rock and hip hop song lyrics.If you love American history and seek the real story, this is the right book. Loewen's prose is superb, the pace is quick and thorough, and you walk away thirsting for more. Essentially, what's wrong with American history textbooks is what's wrong about America -- instead of dealing with the truth about the challenges we face, we are consciously detoured from one "success" to another. We are left uninformed and disarmed; yet it is a philosophical truth that we learn from mistakes not from successes.Loewen shows the rules of textbook writing, which are entirely aimed at gaining approval by textbook evaluators, specifically those who represent major purchases, like Texas and California. Accordingly, everything that might offend anyone, is excised. The victims, of course, are our students, and ultimately, our country. What falls by the wayside is the truth. Worst of all, the textbook publishers have made history a dreadful bore, when real history engages the emotions as well as the intellect. Loewen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me," does that!

This book is amazing. Check up on the historical claims in this book and they all check out. The historical clarrifications of some of the issues are what I was curious about and for the most part, this book covers the subjects I am interested in. Are these other guys just making these claims, over the years, as a concerted plan to change the reality of what happened in our history. The "Nationalist Flag Wavers, North and South, of this country are non apologetic concerning what we have done in our 239 years of being our own country, so they deny and attempt to change textbooks to read their views on how they want it to read. This is just lying about the past. The Southern excuses for why they started the Civil War have been openly changed from the moment the war began. They were fighting to keep Slavery in the South and any new state admitted to the Union. Now they want it to read "The war of northern aggression" when they treasonously seceded and fired on Ft. Sumter. Each state's legislature made formal statements as to why they were choosing to leave the union and states rights to not enforce the runaway slave act by others states was what they stated they were not in favor of. Our education system needs to be held accountable in some way for allowing revisionist history to be allowed in high school texts that out and out lie.. These untruths and revision of history to make some look better in history is just never ending and they just keep piling the manure up and cramming it into southern students heads.I would think this book and it's author, James W. Loewen, should win about any journalistic award out there for the efforts he puts forward to write and then re write this historical clarification of our texts so all students of American history can relearn what really happened up to now.

Over the last two years I have attempted to build a good reputation on Amazon through offering honest reviews of material that I read. This one is difficult to write about as either way negative or positive will result in negative votes. Before scoring me negatively for rating the book at 4 stars hopefully you will give me a chance to explain my rationale and list both the positive and negative aspects of this book. As a history teacher I think this book has immense value serving to highlight important issues that history teachers have to take into account. While I do not agree with everything Mr Loewen says (and I don't think he wants me to) I found the basic concept of the book to be useful.One of my friends has cited this book as a list of "leftist talking points." In one respect that is a fair analysis. Much of the concerns that Loewen expresses might be expected to be discussed by teachers with a liberal mindset. Global warming, class discrimination, anti-colonialist sentiments, and incessant talk of exploitation are just a few of the things one might expect to hear about from a democrat running for office. The fact of the matter is that while Loewen has attempted to deny this he does not help his cause in this new edition. It would be easy to say that Loewen finds himself infrequently at odds with Conservative values even though he sees himself as something of a moderate. Unfortunately, the political nature of his discussion has a polarizing effect at times and anchors him on one side of the fence.His strong denunciation of George W. Bush serves to clearly show his political allegiance. While I am certainly no fan of Mr. Bush's policies I was not exactly sure that he was presenting him in a clear and objective manner. At times I think that Mr. Loewen allows his political passions to cloud his objectivity in reviewing topics he feels passionate about. For example: he wants to denounce the Vietnam War and trudge up war crimes committed by U.S. soldiers. This is not an issue that I am willing to contest but I would like to say that in spite of this he fails to talk about war crimes committed against soldiers. My Father was there and remembers well the fear of a small child who may come up at any time strapped with explosives. I think that while we are certainly guilty it should be remembered that this is not just a feature of U.S. policy but rather an ugly aspect of war.Nevertheless, despite this there is a genius to this book. First of all, we are never told that Loewen agrees with everything he says. In one place he cites a review that referred to him as a socialist and then goes on to say that his real views of capitalism might surprise the reviewer. There are things that he says about Christianity for example that fly in the face of liberal sentiments. His perspective on John Brown uniquely pointed out that John Brown is crazy not because of his psychological status but because of his ideological perspective. Brown acted on what he believed was the "biblical" thing to do and now history judges him severely. In the final section he denounces the idea that the power elites are controlling the information and believes it is just not that simple. While he does acknowledge a level of class oppression he believes history books and lessons are controlled by different forces. This certainly flies in the face of leftist ideology about the elite. All of this raises questions as to the genuine motives of Loewen. Is he a liberal shoveling leftist propaganda or is he playing 'devil's advocate?'I believe while he is a moderate liberal this is not his main goal. I think the point of the book is to be provocative for the purpose of generating listeners. The title itself "Lies my Teacher Told Me" is meant to have a shock value! In a way, Mr. Loewen wants you to get mad and he wants to derail the reader off his or her little train tracks. The point of the book is to dispose of naive history that is propagated through faulty textbooks. Loewen believes there are a lot of colors in the story and he wants to make sure that you noticed them. The point is to teach us to try and cultivate multiple sets of eyeballs and leave behind our own self-caused ignorance so we can know. Loewen is not seeking to shame us although a little shame does not hurt from time to time. Loewen wants us to see that "the antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honesty and inclusivism."The main arguments of this book are as follows: First, Loewen believes that rote memorization and naive historical narrative creates a "disney view" of history that does not foster a coherent and useful view of social life. Secondly, he argues that presenting history with "warts" and all is the most effective way to help young people make sense out of a complicated world. He argues that presenting ourselves and our culture as the "international good guy" is harmful fostering prideful nationalism and promoting imperialistic viewpoints that blind us when we are doing wrong to others. He believes that the real catalyst for this or at the biggest symptom of the problem is the textbook. Textbooks have glaring problems with all of this and are often written by people who have little to no background in history. Ghost writers write them and names are basically rented to put on the front to make it seem credible. Loewen wants the authors who lend their names to know what goes out under their names and he wants teachers to make sure their students get the full account.All in all this book was worth reading and I would recommend it to anyone. Do I agree with everything this man said? No but I appreciate what he was doing. Challenging people makes them mad and if you don't believe that then keep reading the other reviews. However challenging people makes them think. If all they do is study and solidify their position at least it is solidified. However, naive acceptance of half-truths is not the way to move our students towards civic and social competence in an ever changing world.

Great product.

Interesting and cool

its won awards for telling the truth.

is important to know the truth about the cruel history of the U.S.,U.S is a cruel world dictatorship since 250 years

大好きです‼️ 買ってよかったです。教科書にない歴史が沢山あって、興味深く読ませていただきました。