Lies My Teacher Told Me

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Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong is a 1995 book by James W. Loewen, a sociologist. It critically examines twelve popular American high school history textbooks and concludes that the textbook authors propagate false, Eurocentric and mythologized views of American history. In addition to his critique of the dominant historical themes presented in high school textbooks, Loewen presents themes that he says are ignored by traditional history textbooks. A revised hardcover edition was released on April 1, 2008.

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Themes

In Lies My Teacher Told Me, Loewen criticizes modern American high school history textbooks for containing incorrect information about people and events such as Christopher Columbus, the lies and inaccuracies in the history books regarding the dealings between the Europeans and the Native Americans, and their often deceptive and inaccurate teachings told about America's commerce in slavery. He further criticizes the texts for a tendency to avoid controversy and for their "bland" and simplistic style. He proposes that when American history textbooks elevate American historical figures to the status of heroes, they unintentionally give students the impression that these figures are superhumans who live in the irretrievable past. In other words, the history-as-myth method teaches students that America's greatest days have already passed. Loewen asserts that the muting of past clashes and tragedies makes history boring to students, especially groups excluded from the positive histories.

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Sources

The twelve textbooks Loewen examined for the first edition are:

• The American Adventure (Allyn & Bacon, 1975)
• American Adventures (Steck-Vaughn, 1987)
• American History (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982)
• The American Pageant (D. C. Heath and Company, 1991)
• The American Tradition (Charles E. Merrill Publishing, 1984)
• The American Way (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979)
• The Challenge of Freedom (Glencoe, 1990)
• Discovering American History (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974)
• Land of Promise (Scott, Foresman, 1983)
• Life and Liberty (Scott, Foresman, 1984)
• Triumph of the American Nation (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986)
• The United States: A History of the Republic (Prentice Hall, 1991)

In the second edition, Loewen added a newer edition of The American Pageant and six additional textbooks:

• The American Pageant (Houghton Mifflin, 2006)
• The American Journey (Glencoe/McGraw-Hill, 2000)
• The Americans (McDougal Littell, 2007)
• America: Pathways to the Present (Prentice Hall, 2005)
• A History of the United States (McDougal Littell, 2005)
• Holt American Nation (Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 2003)

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Reception

Lies my Teacher Told Me is the winner of the 1996 American Book Award, the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, and the Critics Choice Award of the American Educational Studies Association.

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References

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External links

• Official website
• Booknotes interview with Loewen on Lies, March 26, 1995.

Source of article : Wikipedia