Lies My Teacher Told Me

Rating:
Summary: Mr. Orwell goes to Washington
Review: American education is Orwellian, in a far more literal sense than the word is usually employed, according to this book. In "1984," the state realized that to control the language was to control the mind -- hence, words like "rebellion" vanished and phrases like "freedom is slavery" sprang up. This author points out how long and how efficiently such a process has gone on in American schools. Once you label John Brown "insane," you free schoolchildren from having to reflect upon what they share with him -- and perhaps what they should share with him. Once you make Helen Keller "inspirational," you insulate those children from having to confront her as irritating, dangerous and challenging. They will not have the historical vocabulary to think those thoughts -- or to wrestle with Abraham Lincoln, a man of his times, or assault the citadel of the soiled and sainted Christopher Columbus. Read Loewen's book to help yourself and your children begin your argument with the American experience. As the alternative bumper sticker says: "Question your OWN authority."

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating, well researched, and well written
Review: Loewen's book is good at not only giving a mini-history education in and of itself, but in pointing out the reasons WHY history is taught so poorly and not enjoyed by most students. He has thoroughly footnoted his chapters and carefully addressed the inaccuracies/omitted episodes from high school history texts. This is an excellent book, receiving a 9 instead of a 10 only because he is occasionally a little impractical - preferring, for example, to think that children tell Helen Keller jokes to deflate a symbol too good to be true (rather than for the pure pleasure of telling cruel jokes) and believing America's Civil War was won with superior political ideology rather than gunpowder, supplies, and battles. (The title of his discussion on the Civil War ought to be "Fantasyland: An ivory tower view of war"). Remembering that NO history book is going to be written without some bias (even Loewen's), it is a pleasure to recommend this fine book for correction of errant historical perceptions and stimulation to learn more about American history.

Rating:
Summary: A good jumping off point into deeper study
Review: This book opened my eyes to history. Not that I bought everything the author put forth (although I think he is on the money); only that it created in me a desire to find out the real facts through my own study. This is a well-written and endlessly fascinating book. Since I read it, I always look between the lines of what is being told to me regardless of the poltitical orientation of the person speaking. An eye-opening read.

Rating:
Summary: I loved the book
Review: I thought it was a well thought out, informative book. I was amazed at all of the things I thought I knew about and ended up being lies. I have showed this book to teachers at my school and they all agree that most students don't become aware of these lies untill college. The history tecaher I have allowed me and aa friend to do a presentation to other classes exposing some of the lies this book talked about and all of the other students were just as stunned as I was at first, to find that they had been lied to from a book that millions of students all over the world read and learn info from every day. I am finally realizing why I hated history clss so bad when I was younger, every one of the people we talked about had a picture over them and they all appeared exactly the same, they all did good things for every one and took no more than what was given. But in realitly they all took every thing they wanted and more and they took advantage of any one they could.

Rating:
Summary: This is an invaluable corrective against our amnesia.
Review: I'm home schooling my daughter (12) and find I will use this book and its resources. Beyond the corrective it offeres, I especially like how the author is sensitive to the language and rhetoric of textbooks, even when they are striving to do justice to the complexities of history. The author understands that history needs to be experienced not as propaganda or (in the worst sense) as myth, but as the play of many forces and ideas that had consequences rather than just happened. We should be thankful for this book and those who treat themselves to it will understand how wrong-headed it would be to say that its author is merely pushing some crude political agenda. True, the work is political, but in the deepest sense of giving us a view of ourselves as a community stumbling and sometimes falling towards the future. Finally, the author's remarks on using alternative genres and more real primary sources so students can hear history, not merely read about it, are most refreshing and need to be acted upon by educators, especially in light of the cinematization of history which is often of dubious value.

Rating:
Summary: I thought I was very well-informed until I read this book.
Review: I am a very well-read student of history, a subject at which I excelled throughout high school and college, and have pursued actively ever since. Not since I read Dee Brown's classic, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (not for school, by the way), have I been so excited, aroused, and motivated to read a book. Lies My Teacher Told Me is an eye-opening, "can't-put-it-down" book that humanizes and clarifies American history for the reader. I pride myself on knowing the real story beneath the crap, but Mr. Loewen has awakened me to my own shortcomings and basic beliefs about American heroes and fables. WHOEVER CARES ABOUT THEIR CHILDREN AND THEIR NATION MUST READ THIS BOOK. This book has made sense out of some pretty confusing lies. It has changed my life. I am buying half a dozen copies to send to my nephews and neices.

Rating:
Summary: A bit too PC at times, but well worth reading
Review: Having a Bachelor's degree in History I found the book to be pretty eye-opening in places. His analysis of the political considerations that turn most public school textbooks into what is for the most part mindless mush is quite illuminating as well. However, his obvious lefty political orientation (and I'm a lefty myself) is all too present and is actually quite annoying in places. Nevertheless, with that in mind, it's easy to see why so many college students feel completely lied to by their high school instructors (and one thing the school boards can do to remedy that is to stop allowing P.E. teachers to inhabit history classes). The Babbits that run school boards and sit in principal's offices across the country demanding triumphalist histories that gloss over the real story are guilty of academic fraud and have robbed millions of school children of a clear picture of the nation's past.

Rating:
Summary: A passion for history
Review: Why was history class so bo-o-o-ring, as Loewen describes it? I had forgotten that I even learned anything in my high school history class until I picked up this book and found a spirited critique of several popular school textbooks, including the back-breaking one I once lugged around. Loewen brings to light the fallacies and vague assumptions that we carry around in our brains thanks to history class; and, in his own entertainingly brisk way, fills in some of the gaps in our education. Too bad this wasn't around when I was in school!

Rating:
Summary: A quote from book that says it all
Review: This is an excellent read. Perhaps a short quote from the book will best reveal it's thesis: "Indeed history is the only field in which the more courses students take, (in High School) the stupider they become." As a parent with two childred in grade school I have taken a whole new approach to my discussions of history with them. This should be required reading for grade school history teachers.

Rating:
Summary: Shocking; superb.
Review: Engaging and lucid, Loewen's analysis of the foibles of history teaching in U.S. public schools helped me in the process of re-evaluating my understanding of United States history and government. Would have blown my mind if I hadn't read Howard Zinn first. BTW, Amazon ships this book quickly at a good price -- I got it two days after ordering.