BOOK REVIEW: ‘Lies My Teacher Told Me’ Shows How Ideology-Driven, Bland, Bloated High School History Textbooks Distort America’s History
Reviewed By David M. KinchenHuntington News Network Book Critic
Hinton, WV (HNN) – I knew it: If it weren’t for the miserable textbooks I suffered through in high school history classes, I would be even smarter than I am today, a half century later!
At least this is the feeling I gleaned from reading James W. Loewen’s “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” (The New Press, $27.95, 384 pages, illustrated, indexed, annotated). This is the 2005, 10th anniversary re-issue of his 1995 best-seller about a dozen high school history textbooks – listed in the appendix – and how they distort American history – resulting in vast ignorance and sheer boredom on the part of the students.
Loewen says history is probably the only subject where the more a high school or college student studies it, the less he or she ends up knowing, due to the dismal state of textbookdom.
Just as Loewen’s new “Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism” from the same publisher operates from an essentially liberal point of view (check the archives for my review), so does “Lies My Teacher Told Me” shows how right-wing textbook selection committees in big states like Texas and California influence publishers to create books that promote American Exceptionalism, ”patriotic” values and little or no criticism of flawed American leaders such as Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Stephen Douglas and Woodrow Wilson, to name just a few of Loewen’s examples in “Lies…”
Diane Ravitch (“The Language Police”, which I’ve reviewed in this space) and others have covered similar textbook writing and selection issues, which remain as hardy as the annual “War over Christmas” debate.
American history textbooks such as “The American Pageant” by Thomas A. Bailey and David M. Kennedy and “Triumph of the American Nation” by Paul Lewis Todd and Merle Curti all too often portray history as a uninterrupted saga of improvement; the reality, as Loewen points out in both this book and “Sundown Towns” is that there was a time during the all-too-often scorned Reconstruction period after the Civil War (oops, gotta call it “War Between the States” or else an Alabama or Georgia school board won’t accept the book) when rights for blacks were protected, often by Federal troops, and race relations – even in deepest Mississippi – seemed to be improving. Loewen cites the example of a white state legislator in Reconstruction era Mississippi marrying a black schoolteacher from the North. As he points out both in “Lies…” and “Sundown Towns”, the “nadir” of race relations descended on the South – and the entire nation – beginning in the 1880s and lasting several generations.
“Lies My Teacher Told Me” is a scorched-earth look at the way history is presented to adolescent minds. Biology and mathematics are taught in a fairly straightforward manner, although I think the latest flap over Darwin, creationism and Intelligent Design might make the point about biology questionable. Loewen blasts everyone involved, but has special scorn for publishers and state textbook adoption groups who take all the reality out of history and drive students to distraction. I bet the Mississippi inter-racial marriage episode would startle high school students as much as it did me! It sounds like a love story to me, certainly one better than the syrupy stuff dished out in Margaret Mitchell’s racist “Gone With the Wind.”
Illinois native Loewen had first-hand experience with bland textbooks when he co-authored one in 1974 that told the truth about Mississippi, where he was teaching, in a book – “Mississippi: Conflict and Change” – that was rejected by school boards in the state. His book finally – after a lawsuit – was adopted by a few school districts in the state, he relates.
As anyone who has taken a look at textbooks today, they’re crammed with illustrations, factoids and propaganda, almost like a 1,000 page USA Today gone amok on coated paper. Loewen calls much of the facts in textbooks “twigs.” (As in “can’t see the forest for the trees”). I have a gut feeling that history textbooks the world over are not much better than the Dirty Dozen he examines in “Lies…”
In fact, the Japanese have been bitterly criticized by China for their history textbooks’ distorted view of the events leading up to and including their brutal, racist conduct during World War II, including the Rape of Nanking in 1937.
It would make an interesting book – or series of books – if a talented sociologist like Loewen (University of Vermont, emeritus) examined textbooks in, say, Japan, China, Germany, Russia and Israel. Left-wing Israelis are among those who’ve criticized Israeli history textbooks, including the events leading up to Israel’s War of Independence in 1948. There’s no need to examine the anti-Semitic hatred spewed out by Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iran and Saudi Arabia, to name just a few Islamic countries. No one in those countries would dare do what Israeli lefties have done time and again.
Out of the mouth – and computer – of a former member of the projectionists club at Rochelle (Ill.) Township High School comes this suggestion: Why not do away with textbooks altogether and show students DVDs of films – feature and documentary – dealing with history. The films could be supplemented by class research projects like photographing historical markers – a Loewen suggestion – and determining the truth or fiction behind them. Independent projects encourage independent thinking – something many communities fear, I think.
Of course, we would run up against historically inaccurate portrayals, but nothing could be as bad as the obese textbooks kids are lugging around today. “Dances With Wolves” would show the appeal of Native American living to whites – a subject Loewen brings up in his book. The documentary films of Ken Burns would be high on my list, showing the real racism of America past and present. I wonder how many high school kids know that up until about 1885, there were blacks in major league baseball? Or how many know about the success of black jockeys at prestigious tracks like Churchill Downs? Jim Crow laws put an end to these particular improvements in race relations.
I would even include those misguided films – examples include “Das Boot” and “The Desert Fox” -- that make heroes out of Nazis. But balance them with “The Great Escape,” which has a scene of Nazis machine-gunning recaptured allied POWs. And “Schindler’s List,” “Sophie’s Choice,” etc.
While some might detect a Marxist glimmer in Loewen’s eye as he examines the Dirty Dozen, my libertarian tendencies suggest that he’s on the right track. Speaking of just one aspect he covers in his look at 10 topics and how they’re presented in the textbooks, I’ll suggest that the chamber of commerce-like giddiness about how great the average worker – as opposed to perk-ridden corporate executives – has fared under globalization and other discontents over the past 30 or so years – since 1973 -- is glossed over or ignored in history texts. Tell the once prosperous ex-steelworker in East Chicago, Ind. – where I misspent a year in the prosperous 1960s at now defunct Youngstown Sheet & Tube – how great it is to be working at Mickey D’s or Wal-Mart – and be prepared to run for your life!
Publisher web site: www.thenewpress.com