James W. Loewen

Criticizes the way history is presented in current textbooks, and suggests a fresh and more accurate approach to teaching American history

Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

Lies My Teacher Told Me

Everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong

Holly 

Why do textbooks promote wartless stereotypes? The authors’ omissions and errors can hardly be accidental… why don’t they let the public in on these matters?

Heroification itself supplies a first answer…

Michael Kammen suggests that authors selectively omit blemishes in order to make certain historical figures sympathetic to as many people as possible. The textbook critic Norma Gabler has testified that textbooks should "present our nation's patriots in a way that would honor and respect them"…

 We teach Keller as an ideal, not a real person, to inspire our young people to emulate her…

College teachers in most disciplines are happy when their students have had significant exposure to the subject before college. Not teachers in history. History professors in college routinely put down high school history courses. A colleague of mine calls his survey of American history "Iconoclasm I and II" because he sees his job as disabusing his charges of what they learned in high school.  In no other field does this happen… Professors of English literature don’t presume that Romeo and Juliet was misunderstood in high school.

Emily McMeans

“In the United States the richest fifth of the population earns twelve times as much income as the poorest fifth, one of the highest ratios in the industrialized world; in Great Britain the ratio is seven to one, in Japan just four to one.”

“…concern for states' rights did not motivate secession. Moreover, as the war continued, the Confederacy began to deny states' rights within the new nation. As early as December 1862, President Jefferson Davis denounced states' rights as destructive to the Confederacy.”

Segregation: Asystem of racial etiquette that keeps the oppressed group separate from the oppressor when both are doing equal tasks, like learning the multiplication tables, but allows intimate closeness when the tasks are hierarchical, like cooking or cleaning for white employers.

“…the problem of Reconstruction was integrating Confederates, not African Americans, into the new order.”

“In short, slavery prompted the United States to have imperialist designs on Latin America rather than visions of democratic liberation for the region.”

“…the leadership positions that African Americans frequently reached among American Indian nations from Ecuador to the Arctic show that people do not automatically discriminate against others on the basis of skin color.”

“Before the Civil War, these matters were states' rights, ver- theless, South Carolina claimed the right to determine whether New York coula prohibit slavery within New York or Vermont could define citizenship in Vermont.”

“Authors seem unaware that most land sales be- fore the twentieth century, including sales among whites, transterred primarily the rights to farm, mine, and otherwise develop the land, not the right to bar passage across it.”

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

“A map found in Turkey dated 1513 and said to be based on material from the library of Alexander the Great includes coastline details of South America and Antarctica. Ancient Roman and Carthaginian coins keep turning up all over the Americas, causing archaeologists to conclude that Roman seafarers visited the Americas more than once.”

“…there is a reciprocal relationship between truth about the past and justice in the present.”

“Critical thinking requires assembling data to back up one's opinion. Otherwise students may falsely conclude that all opinions are somehow equal.”

J. L. Askew

Loewen’s groundbreaking book about how history is taught in our schools was well received when it first came out in 1995. The catchy title sparked immediate interest from legions of students who hated history and the book has been a perennial best seller ever since.
Loewen purports our schoolbooks are filled with distortions about our past, leaving students handicapped, unable to distinguish between truth and “truthiness.” One problem is the way American history fosters the “heroification” of its leaders by glorifying their accomplishments while omitting negatives like moral failures. Another way is by perpetuating myths and cultural archetypes like Betsy Ross and the “legend” of the first American flag. These misrepresentations and omissions don’t just leave students with false beliefs, but ultimately affect society.
Trained as a sociologist, Loewen’s youthful activism apparently led to this book, for which he had lofty aspirations. If we will only tell the truth about the past, we can make things right from here on. “I believe that most Americans, once they understand why things are as they are, will work to foster justice where there was unfairness and truth where lies prevailed.” 
While the author cites evidence for some points he often strays from solid ground when arguing his core beliefs. Loewen’s agenda quickly becomes apparent. In the trademark words of a progressive, he states “a topic that is mystified or distorted in our history, like secession usually signifies a continuing injustice in the present like racism.”
Here he reveals his main premise: racism is both the cause of historical falsehood and the result. So-called “false” history is a mirror of society, reflecting a pervasive racism and these historical distortions themselves lead to the inequities of our present day. Much of the book consists of ferreting out “lies” in the historical narrative and thereby exposing structural racism in our society. 
Loewen seems to fault textbooks for leaving out things he favors, yet he concedes that writing history is selective, that everything can’t be included. He faults the coverage of Woodrow Wilson, citing the racist policies of the 28th president and his jingoistic and aggressive actions in other countries. Yet he praises Wilson, saying his “progressive legislative accomplishments in just his first two years, including tariff reform, an income tax, the Federal Reserve Act, and the Workingman’s Compensation Act, are almost unparalleled.” Not everyone believes these are good things, especially the income tax, which is the central pillar of our gargantuan, authoritarian government.
When calling for a better telling of our country’s beginnings, the author concedes, “this ‘new’ history must not judge Columbus by standards from our own time. In 1493 the world had not decided, for instance, that slavery was wrong.” Yet when Loewen offers scathing criticism of the South over racism and slavery, he speaks from his own liberal world view.
For example, he says, “Many states required textbooks to call the Civil War ‘the War Between the States’, as if no single nation had existed that secession had rent apart.” This is clearly a partisan assertion and subject to a sound counterargument. Congress was not in session when the conflict began and Lincoln single-handedly initiated war when he called on the individual states to provide 75,000 troops “to put down the rebellion.” It was not “Civil War” because the belligerents were not fighting for central control, rather Southerners wanted freedom to have their own country while Lincoln was determined to hold on to empire.
Of course, slavery was an important issue, but the Confederacy was not fighting for that reason except from the perspective that while battling for “hearth, home, and family," the South was defending its way of life. To single out slavery as the main cause is a common argument among progressives and the author churns page after page in his book promoting the view. Claiming the North fought to “free the slaves” is a form of “virtue-signaling”, a phenomenon first described in Robert Penn Warren’s classic book “The Legacy of the Civil War”. The best explanation for why the South seceded is Italian academic Raimondo Luraghi’s short book “Five Lectures on the American Civil War.”
While “Lies My Teacher Told Me” offers stimulating thought about history texts, the author’s politicizing soon becomes monotonous. In the end Loewen’s work is a polemic to liberalism and socialism.

Sarah Schumacher

Must read for every American. I read the revised version, which doesn’t seem to be on Good Reads.

Phenomenal. This book teaches snippets of interesting history, but more importantly it discusses why it is the first piece of media which has introduced you to topics such as Helen Keller’s socialism or the nadir following reconstruction. It delves into the social politics (as well as the regular politics) which shape American History courses for high school students nationwide and impressed upon its readers the importance of critical, but not skeptical, learning of history. While a great work of its own it also provides a great jumping off point for doing one’s own research into our collective history. 

Emily Orlando

DNF
Politically biased and boring after a few chapters

“Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book. It is both a refreshing antidote to what has passed for history in our educational system and a one-volume education in itself.” —Howard Zinn A new edition of the national bestseller and American Book Award winner, with a new preface by the author Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important—and successful—history books of our time. Having sold nearly two million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship and was heralded on the front page of the New York Times. For this new edition, Loewen has added a new preface that shows how inadequate history courses in high school help produce adult Americans who think Donald Trump can solve their problems, and calls out academic historians for abandoning the concept of truth in a misguided effort to be “objective.” What started out as a survey of the twelve leading American history textbooks has ended up being what the San Francisco Chronicle calls “an extremely convincing plea for truth in education.” In Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen brings history alive in all its complexity and ambiguity. Beginning with pre-Columbian history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, the My Lai massacre, 9/11, and the Iraq War, Loewen offers an eye-opening critique of existing textbooks, and a wonderful retelling of American history as it should—and could—be taught to American students.

Lauren Attaway

This book does a great job of pointing out that reading/hearing/memorizing something is not the same as learning about it.

Jillian Slindee

I couldn’t finish it. The history parts were very good. 

I am ashamed at what I didn’t know... 

but the whole 50 pages on textbook adoption put me over the edge.

Mike Skalnik

Megan Gardner

carissa r

Martha F.

Sara Sunshine

"Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book. It is both a refreshing antidote to what has passed for history in our educational system and a one-volume education in itself." --Howard Zinn A new edition of the national bestseller and American Book Award winner, with a new preface by the author Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has become one of the most important--and successful--history books of our time. Having sold nearly two million copies, the book also won an American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship and was heralded on the front page of the New York Times in the summer of 2006. For this new edition, Loewen has added a new preface that shows how inadequate history courses in high school help produce adult Americans who think Donald Trump can solve their problems, and calls out academic historians for abandoning the concept of truth in a misguided effort to be "objective." What started out as a survey of the twelve leading American history textbooks has ended up being what the San Francisco Chronicle calls "an extremely convincing plea for truth in education." In Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen brings history alive in all its complexity and ambiguity. Beginning with pre-Columbian history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, the My Lai massacre, 9/11, and the Iraq War, Loewen offers an eye-opening critique of existing textbooks, and a wonderful retelling of American history as it should--and could--be taught to American students.

Cindi Coan

Nikki Milton

Morgan Holland

Luis Redondo Cañada 

Caitlin Bohannon

Shailan Gosai

Criticizes the way history is presented in current textbooks, and suggests a fresh and more accurate approach to teaching American history.

Alyssa Mastrocco

Noha Abdelaziz

Anne 

Criticizes the way history is presented in current textbooks, and suggests a more accurate approach to teaching American history.

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

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