James W. Loewan's "Lies My Teacher Told Me"

Paper Summary:

This paper examines "Lies My Teacher Told Me" and shows it as an expose' on high school history books and the tremendous amount of misinformation they contain. The author studied the contents of twelve published high school history textbooks, debunks many of the myths contained in them, and in the process, transforms history from a bland recounting of two-dimensional people into an exciting exploration of the good and bad humankind has done in its history.

From the Paper:

"In twelve chapters, Loewen demonstrates how the authors of high school textbooks distort history to the point that much of what the books contain is essentially untruthful. He has chapters on how writers make boring heroes out of interesting historical people; what roles Christopher Columbus actually did and did not play in history; the real truth about how the United States has treated its native indigenous peoples; the subtle forms racism has taken in history books; the ways efforts to foster racial equality have been left out; how completely the textbooks ignore social class no matter how important its impact on history; systematically-taught misinformation about the Federal government; how incompletely recent American history is covered or even left out; the facts about American history left out in order to present the history of the United States in an unreal but positive way; how history textbooks came to be so incomplete, inaccurate and distorted; and the harm that comes from teaching sanitized, politically-correct versions of history to students who have no way of intelligently questioning what they read. He argues that the sanitization of history means that students cannot see any relationship between cause and effect in history."

More papers on James W. Loewan's "Lies My Teacher Told Me":

• Analytical Essay # 72151 : "James Loewen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me"
• Book Review # 73556 : "Lies My Teacher Told Me"
• Analytical Essay # 72265 : "John W. Loewen's "Lies My Teacher Told Me"

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