Lies My Teacher Told Me

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Lies My Teacher Told Me By: James W. Loewen Report By: Ethan Daniels "Lies My Teacher Told Me" a book written by Professor James W. Loewen gives students an understanding of the past of the United States, and how knowing this could effect our future. Twelve of the most popular and widely used American history textbooks are included in this novel. Loewen uncovers the flaws, lies, and bias the textbooks present. There are two main ideas that come to mind while reading this book. The first is the bais that is show in American History textbooks, and the second is historiography, or the study of the development of how history is written. “Lies My Teacher Told Me” facilitates its process of depicting the writing of American History. Bias is one of the major problems in not only American textbooks, but throughout the world. Am example of bias that is a continuous through “Lies My Teacher Told Me” is heroification. In the book, Loewen decribes it as, "A generative process that makes people over into heroes. (11)". In “Lies My Teacher Told Me” they use Christopher Columbus as an exmple. Christopher is portrayed to be and immaculate, and have no bad flaws or intentions but, in reality, American textbooks leave out huge chunks of information that would leave you thinking differently about him. Some more prime examples of heroification are our presidents. In the book, Loewen says that American textbooks aim to include at least a paragraph about every president in the history of the United States, even if they weren’t all that important. (5) Woodrow Wilson is considered one of the better presidents even though, like many presidents he had unknown flaws. For example, in the book it says, “when describing our Mexican adventures: they identify Wilson as ordering our forces to withdraw, but nobody is specified as having them ordered in! (18)”. Textbooks, don’t talk about

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