Lies My Teacher Told Me

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James Loewen

Amazon Description:
"Since its first publication in 1995, Lies My Teacher Told Me has gone on to win an American Book Award, the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, and to sell over half a million copies in its various editions. What started out as a survey of the twelve leading American history textbooks has ended up being what the San Francisco Chronicle calls "an extremely convincing plea for truth in education." In Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen brings history alive in all its complexity and ambiguity. Beginning with pre-Columbian history and ranging over characters and events as diverse as Reconstruction, Helen Keller, the first Thanksgiving, and the Mai Lai massacre, Loewen offers an eye-opening critique of existing textbooks, and a wonderful retelling of American history as it should—and could—be taught to American students."

My Thoughts:

I found this absolutely fascinating. Loewen's study on our American education system is detailed and disturbing. Of course I realized that textbooks aren’t telling the whole story, but Loewen proves how true that really is. As an avid reader, I was irritated in school by the lack of truth being taught. The watered down, politically correct, stories in history books bored me to no end. I hated history class. Only as I got older and started to study the events in depth, with more objectivity, did I discover my hidden love for history. The revisionist history our children learn is not interesting, I plan to always ensure that my children are getting the full version. Kudos to Loewen for exposing this issue.