Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything American History Textbooks Get Wrong
Author: James W Loewen
Publisher: The New Press
Publishing Date: 2019
Pgs: 282
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REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS
Genre:
Nonfiction
History
Study
Education
Learning
Critical Thinking


Why this book:
Escaping the narrative. Chasing the truth.
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Favorite Quote:
“The Phoenicians’ early feats of sailing do not support the story that white Europeans taught the rest of the world how to do things.”

“No European who has tasted Savage Life can afterwards bear to live in our societies.” The emphasis of the capital letters gives it the quotation marks it would bear today, the sarcasm, the snark. Benjamin Franklin, another built up by the hero worship, but kept to the side is a quote machine.

“No matter how well Native Americans acculturated, they could not succeed in white society. Whites would not let them, Indians who gained property or wealth, built European-style houses, or ran businesses became targets of white thugs who wanted to take over their property. Most courts simply refused to hear testimony from Native Americans against whites. Acculturation could not work because American Indians were not given equal legal rights.” Familiar story, isn't it?

“When information which properly belongs to the people is systemically withheld by those in power, the people soon become ignorant of their own affairs, distrustful of those who m manage them, and—eventually—incapable of determining their own destinies.” — Richard Nixon …I never expected to quote Nixon outside of a biographical or period-specific historical foreign policy context.

Favorite Concept:
American history as a hero building exercise instead of as a vehicle to teach about people, real people, with the failings of real people, who did extra normal things that should be remembered.

History is only real history when it's all there warts and all.

History as a weapon. Ignorance as a tool. Control as a goal.

The Swahili concept of sasha and zamani as applied to a historical context instead of those deceased. Sasha being living memory and the shared context of those still living who lived through it. Zamani being the more distant past, beyond living memory. And history textbooks ignoring sasha and editing the past of teh zamani in service to hero worship and the heroic Anglo narrative.

Hmm Moments:
Only 35 of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower were Pilgrims. And the ship's destination was supposed to be Jamestown. Did they hijack and redirect the ship so they wouldn't fall under the religious control of the Anglican Church in Virginia?

Calling the Ball:
Should’ve been called Lies My Textbook Told Me, laying this at the feet of teachers is unfortunate. Teachers' power to influence minds is being challenged through politics and control of dilettantes.

The history of the 50-year nadir should be taught in its full horrifying truth.

WTF Moments/RUFKM Moments:
Wait! Wait! Wait! President Warren G Harding, while president, became a member of the KKK in a ceremony at the White House???

The Sigh:
Realistically, I expected there to be a whitewashing/racewashing aspect to the stories left out of history, but damn.


A Path I Can’t Follow:
The recent return to middle and high school history texts of states rights as THE issue in the Civil War is disgraceful. Yeah, a state’s right to be a white supremacist POS full of slavery.

Turd in the Punchbowl:
The Mayflower Compact, neither first, nor American, nor directly influencing the Declaration or the Constitution, all that is a myth of a relationship created by Big Textbook and the Heroic Anglo Narrative.

Confirmation Bias:
The hero building in history texts owes a lot to the Bible. Too many of those writing early textbooks were trying to please the church fathers rather than do and promote real scholarship. Because in too many narrow minded circles, real scholarship is seen as challenging the Bible. Faith that can’t stand up to fact is weak. But history should never be an article of faith.

The dark side of the Columbus myth and the horrible fallout of the Columbian exchange and all that slowed from it, good and bad. Hero building aside, there was a lot of suffering and inhumanity that are directly attributable to him.

Wisdom:
Why do politicians propagandize textbooks and teaching, because in a generation or two they're propaganda becomes the truth. Just look at the way that many young Southerners view reconstruction. Their understanding of it is viewed strictly through the lens of the short-sighted, propagandized textbooks we were taught from in middle school and high school.

Juxtaposition:
Reading the chapter on the Civil War fills me with foreboding. Looking at the way that right wing politicians talk about a woman’s right to choose, and anyone who isn’t part of THEM and the way they are cloying the argument as a state’s right to decide, it feels like a song and dance that has been done before. And with Texas, Florida, and Tennessee racing to outdo one another in their pursuit of alienating everyone except white evangelicals on their road to a new secession. That’s the feeling. And watching Tennessee, I bet those crazy bastards could get the votes through their legislature today.

Frederick Douglas pointed out that patriots hold their country accountable for its sins and do not excuse them, while a nationalist denies that the country ever committed sins and cannot think rationally about them.

The Unexpected:
The premise of the book is the stuff that gets left out and the hero building/hero worship presented as history. Early on, the author got me. I like to characterize myself as a student of history. But I had no idea about the pair of shipwrecked gentlemen shipwrecked in Holland in 60 BC, believed today to have been Native American.

The Poker Game/DND Table:
Benjamin Franklin for either, or both, would be an awesome evening.
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Things I’ve Learned:
In making one of my above comments, this book forced me to look up the term cognoscenti.