Introduction
Introducing the title ‘Lies My Teacher Told Me’ Loewen criticizes the distaste for history the American students have. Students with African American, Latino, and Native American backgrounds approach history always with a particular distaste. This dislike has been observed by almost all the history teachers. At the same time, he emphasizes the fact that American history is more important than any other topic since it is their own past. According to Loewen, it is the presentation of the subject that does not illuminate the past with the present, hence the past loses its relevance for the present situation, as far as the students are concerned. The very presentation of the book itself makes the book uninteresting and not memorable. At the same time, the history books have never been revised or corrected as the history profession does not spend time on them. Moreover, the textbooks do not really give a sense of the nature of history. Keeping all this in mind Loewen invites the Americans to do better on this front.
The True Importance of Christopher Columbus
Christopher could really be looked upon as the beginning point of the modern age of the Americas. Whereas, describes Loewen every school child in America remembers the date 1492, but the historians fail to record “virtually everything that is important to know about Columbus” (Loewen 1995) on the other hand the authors make up beautiful stories to humanize Columbus. The collective account given about Columbus on the history books are unfortunately not verifiable or practically wrong according to Loewen.
Due to the diversity of the culture, the historians have struggled to make equilibrium thus not offending anyone. Thus they would not leave out Arawakas, Phoenician precursors, or glorify De Soto. Similarly when Columbus is glamorized the textbook would suggest we identify with the oppressor, but the new times can not judge Columbus from our own time. It is clear that in “1493 world had not decided, for instance, that slavery was wrong. Some Indian nations enslaved other Indians. Africans enslaved other Africans. Europeans enslaved other Europeans. To attack Columbus for doing what everyone else did would be unreasonable” (Loewen 1995).
Red Eyes
Loewen argues that today’s students study Native American history through white people’s perspectives. He further claims that the overall interpretations of the authors are still shackled by conventional assumptions and semantics. He believes that it is not the authors of history but those archaeologists, ethnobotanists, linguists and physical anthropologists are the ones who could reasonably tell us about what happened in the Americas before the Europeans and Africans arrived. For actually “a significant number of archaeologists believe that people reached most part of the Americas within a thousand years” (Loewen 1995).
Loewen observes that “the Indian-White war that dominated our history from 1622 to 1850 were of considerable importance” (Loewen 1995). But to a great extent, the textbook authors have compromised on facts to let the students feel good about while studying. Hence telling Indian history to be a story of white villains might prove to be a feel-good history only for those who pertained to prove that America and whites are bad. At the same time, the native Indian community should be emphasized as a cultural asset from which everyone could learn in the future.
The Land of Opportunity
A certain part of textbooks only shares the high points of labor history. As a result, the students of America come out of high school knowing the different social classes in American society and not knowing how did these classes come about. The main reason for this narrates Loewen’s “history textbooks contain no index listing at all for social class, social stratification, class culture, income distribution, inequality or any conceivably related topic” (Loewen 1995). However, he is of the opinion that social class in a way is the single and most important variable in society. The differences in the lifestyle between the rich and the poor of the society experienced from the beginning of conception in the mother’s womb to the last hour of life in America.
Loewen complaints of the mindless teaching of historians which turns aluminize of history to be just onlookers of today’s system, not being able to criticize or defend the system. Such a situation results from the message the historians give to the young students that what American society needs to remain strong is “citizens who assent its social structure and economic system without thought” (Loewen 1995). However, such mindless teaching enables the students to live in the myth of America being the land of opportunities. Therefore, the sky is the limit for the youngsters, most of the time reaching for the sky without knowing one may not get it. He exhorts that, it is American history that holds the promise to tell the high school students that how they and their parents along with their communities and societies came to where they are now.
Down the Memory Hole
Loewen explains how strategically historians have avoided the immediate past from the textbook. Obviously, because the immediate past is known to the youngsters and thus it could become controversial, whereas, the youngsters could only relate the past to the present and know the relevance of the history only when they know and learn the past. At the same time, the immediate past for historians has already become an unknown past for their children. For instance, the lecture on the Vietnam War had become a strange topic just in ten years’ time and the lecturer received “blank looks from the students” (Loewen 1995). It would not be a surprise that the new college graduate would have very little chance of remembering the war when it is not elaborately introduced in history class.
When textbooks downplay recent history it is made “hard for the student to draw connections between the study of the past, their lives today and the issues they will face in the future” (Loewen 1995). He argues that the recent past is our important past and it has been avoided in our textbooks and the students are made to think the ancient past is more relevant. As a result, the students are deprived of the perspective to analyze the issues that most affect them.
Conclusion
The history needs to be informed with evidence and reasons. The history books are to be designed in such a way that makes sense to the student that one feels the relevance of the incidents in light of the present issues he/she is faced with. There may be controversies in history, the students have the right to know the truth and only then they could draw sense out of it.
Reference
Loewen, J. (1995) Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Text Book Got Wrong Topeka Bindery Simon and Schuster Adult Publishing Group.