Review: Lies My Teacher Told Me

If you're wondering, I'm packing in the reviews before I leave so I don't have to carry these books to Korea.

History taught at the high school level and under lacks complexity, and Loewen takes issue with the whole production line, from textbook authors to teachers. He points out weaknesses in 12 textbooks, and suggests ways to improve the system. The basic point is that we use history as a way of cultural indoctrination to build patriotism (like Thanksgiving and Columbus), rather than as a resource to learn from.

This explains why so many students dislike history -- they know they're being manipulated. Because real history and real people aren't truly examined until (maybe) the college level, this book is a great read for anyone with even a mild interest in history. For serious students it should be required.

Each chapter of the book is both interesting and incredibly well researched. Reading through his nearly 60 pages of endnotes just about feels like you're getting a special "bonus" chapter. Note that this is not a history book; if anything it's a textbook supplemental -- it examines the weaknesses of existing texts.

It was also eye-opening for me. Before I read it (several years back), I believed that people and governments generally act on what they think is right. It was just "right" that the Civil Rights Act was passed. Women got the right to vote because people just realized it was time.

By reading this book, though, I saw a different viewpoint -- people will generally act out of self-interest. Folks will either believe what they're told or whatever's convenient (chapter 12 talks about cognitive dissonance). It's not that we're dopes -- it's just that in the absence of anything to the contrary we'll believe just about anything, and most of us have too many other things to worry about. Whether it's a civil rights issue or the decision to invade a country (and noted this was published in 1995), we tend to do what we want, and we'll believe that it's right.

Perhaps the most interesting chapter for adults over 50 will be chapter nine. The way the Vietnam War is taught today disregards most of the domestic U.S. conflict. The images that shaped U.S. opinion (like the self-immolation of Buddhist monks, the picture of the naked girl crying after village got napalmed, and the on-camera assassination) get neglected as "too controversial."

But real history is a string of ideological conflicts and decisions made by flawed human beings. This book encourages teachers -- right so -- to examine *that* side of our story.