Lies My Teacher Told Me

Lies My Teacher Told Me stresses how students can repeat the same social studies class three times and still be ignorant of American history. Today, U.S. young adults leave most history courses with the false belief that the subject is only a bunch of facts and dates, completely boring, irrelevant to their lives and out of touch with the real world. Especially if a student is Latino, African-American, Asian or other nonwhite, Anglo-Saxon American, the "stories" are so removed from his/her life and culture that there is little or no connection with the written textbook words.

Loewen's main critique centers around the heroification of the nation's historical figures and the in-depth nature of events to rote memorization. It is no wonder that students say history and social studies are their least favorite classes -- despite the fact that they often get better grades in this subject than in math or English.

Textbooks, notes Loewen, do not offer a true understanding of cause and effect, between hero and followers. "Instead, they reflexively ascribe noble intentions to the hero and invoke 'the people' to excuse questionable actions and policies." For example, although President Wilson was anti-black, among other things, textbooks blame the people not him. In fact, everything is painted in black and white (no pun intended) -- good guys and bad -- with all stories ending up happily ever after like fairy tales regardless of the original outcome.

Why do the history books promote wartless stereotypes, questions the author? Wilson's racism is well-known to professional historians. Why don't they let students know about such shades of grey? Again, heroification is part of the answer. Racism is distasteful to most Americans, so authors selectively omit blemishes that would make the nation's leaders unsympathetic to large numbers of people (23). Such heroism also keeps controversial areas bland, avoids confusion and ambiguities, protects youth from disharmony and troublesome facts and keeps students from thinking too much and questioning their heritage (as if they would not do so anyway).

Regardless of the cause, heroification disables the students' minds and treats them like small children who are not mature enough to accept reality -- when ironically, present-day history is more real and disconcerting for most of them.

One of the best examples of untrue heroes is Christopher Columbus. Even though a great deal of new information (pro, but mostly con) has come out on the explorer in the past several decades, history books continue to use the myths of Washington Irving, who published his information in 1828. How can one expect to gain the respect of students by promoting a European who saw himself as superior to the natives, and plundered, persecuted and enslaved? It comes as no surprise that students feel condemned if they have to repeat a history class!

If people hear the same story enough times, they are going to believe it. Regardless if it is true or not, the tale becomes legitimate and factual. Even the suburban horror stories, like the cat fried in the microwave, are believed by a large number of children and adults. The master narrative or overall history of the United States that has been repeated since the beginning of the country has thus become the actual information disseminated via textbooks, while the broader, more diverse and rich historical "truth" (everything is relative) remains as hidden as buried treasure.

As a political fable, the master narrative works well. This does not mean that textbooks always lie, but surely they do not paint the whole picture. The master narrative also glorifies one individual person or group of people over another. In America, it has always assumed the superiority of the white, male, Christian European culture to all indigenous or diverse cultures. Terms such as "Third World" and "Underdeveloped Nations" strengthen the stereotypes. As the United States becomes increasingly multicultural, such antiquated stories will become even more remote to students.

Loewyn points out how textbooks force readers to see history in simplistic terms dominant/subordinate, good/bad, superior/inferior. Unfortunately, if a person is not part of the group normally considered superior, he/she feels inferior and goes through life with completely erroneous information. Loewyn recalls that one day when he was at Tougaloo College, a predominantly black school in Mississippi, he asked the question: What is Reconstruction? All but one agreed it was a period after the Civil War when blacks governed Southern states but were so recently out of slavery they "messed up" and whites had to take back control. There were three misstatements. First, blacks never took over governments. Southern states always had white governors and almost all had white legislatures. Second, governments during Reconstruction didn't screw up. That's a myth. Mississippi had one of its best governments ever. Third, whites did take control, but because a coalition of racist Democrats acted against the interracial coalition that had been governing Mississippi (149). What does it do to self-image if you are black and believe the one time your group played center stage, they "messed up"?

Falsehoods hurt students from all backgrounds. Loewyn notes that high school students have surely seen and heard enough media that they know about relative privilege in the United States (195). They measure their family's social position against that of other families in a vacuum, since they know nothing about how class structure works. Naively they perpetuate falsehoods by blaming the poor for being unsuccessful. They have no idea how people have been oppressed over the centuries and how many of their ancestors still suffer today because of it. High school textbooks are once again at fault by downplaying labor issues, social issues and classes, inequalities, and civil unrest. On the whole, relates the master narrative, America is the land of promise for all people. And once again the story ends "happily ever after" on paper only.