Lies My Teacher Told Me Analysis

After reading The Betrayal of History, I realize that most information that I have learned in history classes are incorrect. I believed that the historian is the only one who rewrites events in the history books. Also, I realized the author of the book is not the only one who writes facts and historical information on the book, but it turns out that others people and organization are controlling the publishing companies, and they have the ability to edit any information and events that they do not agree with. It is weird they do not want children to learn some words like imagine because it is similar to magic.

As I come of age, I do not only learn in the classroom as a student taking English 1 at Sage Hill but in general as a teenager learning how life works. In this past school year alone, I have learned the importance of communication and the concept that friends come and go, but family stays forever. These lessons relate to the themes of Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You.

Many Americans today are extremely uneducated and misinformed when it comes to the history of their nation purely because they find the learning of it boring. Because of the nature of American history courses and the distribution of knowledge in America, James W. Loewen wrote the book, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, to make history more relevant to people who’ve been “bored to tears by their high school American history courses” (xii) because to be effective citizens today we must be able to understand our past.

James W. Loewen wrote the book “Lies My Teacher Told Me” to help students understand the past of the United States, and how it is effecting the present time. “Lies My Teacher Told Me” looks at 12 different American history textbooks, and points out the different lies, flaws, and sugar coated stories the textbooks present. Lowen explains how textbooks practice heroification, and how race and race relations are a major issue when it comes to American history. Among these topics, Lowen also sheds light on the truth about social classes in America, and how textbooks lie about the past and try to avoid the recent past all together.

High school history textbooks are seen, by students, as presenting the last word on American History. Rarely, if ever, do they question what their text tells them about our collective past. According to James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, they should be. Loewen has spent considerable time and effort reviewing history texts that were written for high school students. In Lies, he has reviewed twenty texts and has compared them to the actual history. Sadly, not one text measures up to the author's expectation of teaching students to think. What is worse, though, is that students come away from their classes without "having developed the ability to think coherently about social

“History is written by the victors.” These words, spoken by Winston Churchill, have traditionally been applied to the surviving narratives of thriving empires and nations burying those of the losers. In this day and age, it must be viewed through a much finer lens. Under this lens is the Texas Department of Education, the Kanawha County Board of Education, and South Korea’s Ministry of Education. Each of the mentioned Education systems has encountered controversies surrounding their published textbooks.

After reading this chapter of Lies My Teacher Told Me, the reader finds out information that is shocking and completely different compared to what they have been taught. Not to mention it makes sense. Ideas have either been falsified or twisted into something that is not entirely true. History textbooks really do leave out the information or give the wrong information, that could really make history more enjoyable and interesting for its

In chapter 7 from “Lies My Teacher Told Me was all about the truth behind social class and the truth of what kind of opportunities we really have in America. But not only that, its also about lies in what we are taught and what people are taught to think. This chapter pointed out why people feel and think the way they do. There was quote form the chapter that I liked because it explains that our books and what we are taught gives us the meanings of not truly understanding the truth. Even today we are blind to what the land of opportunity really stands for. “Since History textbooks present the American past as four hundred years of progress and portray our society as a land of opportunity in which folks get what they deserve and deserve what

Lies My Teacher Told Me… Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by J. Loewen, takes a closer look at American History and how high school textbooks are getting it wrong. The books opening has a message from the author on why he felt compelled to write it. Loewen argues that current history books are too complicated and full of a dizzying array of information. Yet they are also explaining history too neatly with clean facts and imparted with bland patriotism. This method, Loewen argues, reduces history to “a gray emotional landscape of pious duty” as opposed to a lively landscape of interrelated stories and events. Leading this generation of American students feeling that American history is an irrelevant and bland subject. Lies My Teacher Told Me samples from 18 top textbooks and addresses the most glaring omissions from them. Some of these events are integral to our American history and the true stories are much more interesting than their whitewashed textbook counterparts.

The novel “Lies my teacher told me everything your american history textbook got wrong” By James w. Loewe, is basically what the title states. Certain things about history that we know we learn from our textbooks that our school provides us. Im not saying that what the school is giving us is wrong. But, the textbook itself is not providing the full information. So, as i read this novel i learned certain things that i did not know before. Like if Columbus Day should actually be celebrated or not. Or more importantly the day we have an incredible feast; thanksgiving what is that really about?. After reading this book things started to get

In his book, Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen discusses the inaccuracies of history textbooks. Centered along the theme of American patriotism, textbooks include false implications throughout their pages, and Loewen challenges history teachers to rise and discuss with their students the true nature of American events. These textbooks, becoming nonsensically thicker, deter students as writers fill them with inapplicable information. As these factors become more prominent with passing time, Loewen defends truth of the past and the spirit of historical study in his enlightening work.

Before reading this book I had no idea that Columbus was actually one of the biggest slave traders in the history of the world, or that John Brown was considered to be a crazy man to many, but when it came to people of African American descent he was a hero, or that Woodrow Wilson was actually a very screwed up man, but our history classes and textbooks do not actually show him showing his “darkside” so to speak, and I could keep going on. It generally takes a lot for someone to tell me that something that I have been learning about for so long is actually is most part wrong, so the fact that James Loewen could do through just one book is impressive. Not only do I believe it, I understand it. He gives many good examples, facts, and details to actually get his point across and prove that what he is saying is actually true. “Lies My Teacher Told” By James W. Loewen is a book that has changed my perspective on history classes and the education system in general forever, and I agree with every statement Mr. Loewen has in his wonderful piece of

The study of history and the teaching of history has come under intense public debate in the United States in the last few decades. The “culture-wars” began with the call to add more works by non-Caucasians and women and has bled into the study of history. Not only in the study of history or literature, this debate has spread into American culture like wildfire.

Once when I was in 7th grade, I was beaten up by my teacher when I forgot my textbook at home. Such behavior used to be legal in the country where I was raised and teachers regularly used this kind of punishment. Had this teacher read Neil Postman’s article The Fallen Angles, he would have realized how wrong he was in requiring extensive use of textbook in learning process. In his article, Postman provides a radical view in education and relates this to the role of textbooks and teachers. While Postman makes a great argument to advance his ideas to reanimate public education and make learning meaningful, it is hard to agree with his concepts such as banning textbooks, making teachers teach subjects that they are not experts in, and requesting students to learn simply by catching mistakes of others.

James Loewen uses his piece Lies my Teacher Told Me to reveal the flaws in America’s mainstream textbooks. Loewen points out the fact that textbooks try to “indoctrinate blind patriotism” (Loewen 6) and “keep students in the dark about the nature of history” (Loewen 8). Almost every American textbook sells history using the “soft seduction” approach, as explained in Robert Greene’s book, The Art of Seduction. Textbooks try to seduce Americans into being proud of their country by making American historical figures look like heroes, like in the case of Helen Keller, Woodrow Wilson, and Christopher Columbus. “Heroification” (Loewen 11) has a