Review: LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME (+Friday56 LinkUp)

Title: Lies My Teacher Told  Me: Everything Your American History Textbooks Got Wrong: A Graphic Adaptation by James W. Loewen and Nate Powell

Summary: In the 1990s James W. Loewen, an American History Professor, published Lies My Teacher Told Me. It was highly regarded, winning both praise and awards. Now in this edition, published in 2024, Loewen has partnered with graphic artist Nate Powell to bring the original back to life with updated information and fantastic illustrations.

Using several American History textbooks currently in use as his examples, Loewen points out why American students are so bored by the subject and find nothing within these textbooks to inform their current situations. Dividing the book into twelve themed chapters he makes a case for truth and honesty about our past and giving students the tools to examine our past to inform our futures.

With the help of one illustration per chapter I shall attempt to summarize the book. Obviously this is just a tiny piece of the book and I encourage you to read it for yourself.

The introduction is very uncomplimentary to the teaching of US history. "History is the only field in which the more courses students take the stupider they become." Ouch. Yet, of all subjects it is the most dependent on textbooks.

 

Ch. 1, American Heroes -- Loewen starts off with a bang. He talks about how we make people into heroes (Betsy Ross, Rosa Parks, Helen Keller) without teaching anything about these individuals and what they actually did to deserve our attention. I proved his point when I had a conversation with an adult not long ago and ask why was Helen Keller an American Hero. The person replied "because she was deaf and blind yet she learned to read and write." That is all we know about her. Not that she was a remarkable person concerned about inequality and how impoverished persons did not have access to health care and other services she had at her avail. She spoke out and wrote about these types of issues. 

Ch. 2, The True Importance of Christopher Columbus -- Up until recently we have made Columbus a hero by saying he discovered America. This idea completely discounts Indigenous people that lived here. It also makes him into a hero even though he was very ruthless in his approach to these people. When we removed Columbus Day or renamed it to Indigenous People's Day many celebrated, but some insist of that Columbus is a hero.

Ch. 3, The First Thanksgiving. We like to think that colonists and Indigenous folks held hands and enjoyed peace right from the start. Unfortunately this is far from the truth.

Ch. 4, Read Eyes -- Deciding who is civilized and who is not based on a Euro-Centric notion. "What we have done to the peoples who were living in North America is our ORIGNIAL SIN." -Sol Tax, anthropologist.

Ch 5, The Invisibility of Racism in textbooks -- This amounts to early forms of anti-woke publishing. Because something is bad, will make people feel uncomfortable, or controversial, leave it out. Ch 6, John Brown and Abraham Lincoln -- John Brown, a white man who was killed for trying to save slaves has gone through a revisionist history. He is portrayed a mentally ill in the textbooks rather than a man who was very concerned about the way slavery considered Black people as subhuman. Don't like something a person does or says? They must be crazy.

Ch. 7, the Land of Opportunity for some -- Though we tell each other we are a classless society that is not true. "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education and we want another class of persons -- a very much larger class of necessity in every society -- to forego the privilege of liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific manual tasks." Woodrow Wilson. Oh boy, are we ever living through this today with Trump politics.

Ch. 8, What the Federal Government is doing and has done -- We hold ourselves up as good paragons of justice in the world, yet reading the above examples, one has to wonder. "As long as you are convinced you have ever done anything, you can never do anything." - Malcolm X. Think about the way we recently bombed Iran. For what?

Ch. 9, The Vietnam War -- Most textbooks spend about as much coverage of the Vietnam War as they do covering the War of 1812. Why? Because we didn't win this war so we can't tell ourselves we were heroes?

Ch. 10, Ignoring the recent past -- What can be learned by studying the Civil Rights Movement, 9-11, the War in Iraq, climate change, pandemics, or the impact of A.I? A ton!

Ch. 11, History and the future -- Shouldn't we study the past to help inform our future? That isn't what most textbooks do.

Ch. 12, Does this way of teaching work? Imagine being a student today and getting a hold of this book in your school library. You read it as your teacher is following the curriculum as set by the textbook. Wouldn't you be angry as you notice the book skips climate change, says next-to nothing about the Black Lives Matter movement, glorifies Betsy Ross who really didn't make the American flag, downplays George Washing and Thomas Jefferson's owning of slave, etc.?

Afterward: Honestly, don't we want a citizenry that knows how to learn and to think for themselves. Shouldn't that be the goal of education?

Review: "Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should red this book." - Howard Zinn. I feel the same way. Unfortunately, the book is also quite overwhelming. Most of the points I was aware of, but not all. I had a really terrible experience in high school and didn't even take an American history class, somehow escaping it in the experimental 1970s. So I didn't realize to what extent information was altered or left out of textbooks. I knew Christopher Columbus wasn't a hero, yet I hadn't realized what a tyrant he was, for example. As I read each chapter I found myself angry and angrier so I had to read slowly and take breaks. I even had to skim some of the chapters just to save my sanity. I've been working on this book almost all summer. But I finished and I still want everyone to read it. My rating of 4 stars reflects the value of the book and how difficult I found it digest.

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-Anne