LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME by James W. Loewen
Howard Zinn’s blurb on the front of this book reads “Every teacher, every student of history, every citizen should read this book. It is both a refreshing antidote to what has passed for history in our educational system and a one-volume education in itself.” I think this is about how I feel about the book as well. I found myself changed for the better for having read it.
The book is structured into chapters about individual topics in history, but I will structure my entry into what I view to be broad themes of major textbooks and American consciousness. Two of these are Heroification and the Myth of Progress. Heroification is the process by which powerful men are remembered as saints who never did anything wrong. An example of this is Christopher Columbus, whose brutal acts are never remembered. It is also a way of creating hagiographic vignettes by which to remember heroes that frame their lives in an inappropriately revisionist way. An example of this is Helen Keller, who is never remember for her radical socialism. I mean, think about her. She was a person who, despite many triumphs, actually came to believe that some people are truly powerless to change their situation. Sadly, this is a message that is censored from American children and replaced with a cover-up to appease those of us who insist Helen Keller be in the texts. The Myth of Progress is the belief that things are always getting better. This is demonstably false. Here is a quote from Lies by anothropology textbook writer William Haviland: “[that] some of the things that we aspire to today–equal treatment of men and women, to cite but one example–have in fact been achieved by some other peoples simply has never occurred to the average beginning undergraduate.” Combine Heroification and the Myth of Progress and throw in a healthy dash of ethnocentricism, and America emerges as the ultimate hero of every textbook and you have the self-excusing attitude shared by just about every American I know. After all, if progress is something we can count on, then we as individuals don’t need to do anything to hasten it. Sadly, the belief that a society is the vanguard of the future has had disatrous consequences in the past. I posit that it is having disastrous consequences today.
Another particularly pernicious trend I have observed in American society today is the belief that citizenship is not compatible with criticism and patriotism is equivalent to acquiescence. You can see it everywhere. Whether it’s Britney Spears “backing her president” or the Republican nominees saying that challenging a war is unpatriotic or my mom echoing these ideas, this is surely an idea that will have great consequence for the soul of America.Lies is a survey of 12 high school history texts, so they are often compared for coverage on particular issues. Sometimes one or two of them get it right, but it is never the same ones. Thus, one is forced to look outside of the standard texts to get real history. Unfortunately, this is one more reason to avoid public schools like the plague. Loewen believes museums and books like his are good sources of information.The question arises why further efforts are not made to silence books such as Loewen’s which question the order of things as they are. Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky (probably others) have addressed this question as well. Moore offers an explanation why the establishments he attacks sometimes help and fund his message. He believes they are so blinded by immediate profit that they will destroy themselves to get it. Chomsky and myself take the more Orwellian stance that it is better to let these ideas through and then stage a “debate” with the author where his work is denounced as “too radical for consideration”.
There is an argument put forth by many that school is intentionally structured this way to achieve the end of having a complacent, unquestioning worker-population. I believe this wholeheartedly and think it a consequence of giving the government control of people’s heads. Loewen rejects this “critical theory”, partly because he thinks the elite would supress books and articles that expose their influence (cf above). Unfortunately, I think he fails to see that outright supression would induce revolt. Everyone wants to appear “fair and balanced.” For the moment, I think this invisible slavery is going along without a hitch.There is so much more to say about the book, but I don’t want to make this post overly long. I think I can say without question that this is the best book I have read in 2007 or 2008.
February 15th, 2010 at 9:24 pm
[…] are some similarities with Lies My Teacher Told Me, but that book doesn’t attempt to be a comprehensive history as Zinn’s book does. I certainly […]