Lies My Teacher Told Me
Cover of the 1995 edition
|
|
| Author | James W. Loewen |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | American history, Historiography, Native American history, African American history |
| Publisher | The New Press |
|
Publication date
|
1995 |
| Pages | 383 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 29877812 |
| 973 20 | |
| LC Class | E175.85 .L64 1995 |
| Followed by | Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong |
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. The New Press lists Lies My Teacher Told Me as its top all-time bestseller.
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.
The twelve textbooks Loewen examined for the first edition are:
In the second edition, Loewen added a newer edition of The American Pageant and five additional textbooks:
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.
...
Wikipedia