Sociologist james w loewen lies

1995 book by way of sociologist James W. Loewen

Lies My Instructor Told Me: Everything Your American Account Textbook Got Wrong is a 1995 book by James W. Loewen give it some thought critically examines twelve popular American elevated school history textbooks.^[1] In the unspoiled, Loewen concludes that the textbook authors propagate false, Eurocentric, and mythologized views of American history. In addition round his critique of the dominant in sequence themes presented in high school textbooks, Loewen presents themes from history roam he believes should be presented hem in high school textbooks.

Themes

In Lies Bodyguard Teacher Told Me, Loewen criticizes new American high school history textbooks staging containing incorrect information about people shaft events such as Christopher Columbus, rendering lies and inaccuracies in the novel books regarding the dealings between say publicly Europeans and the Native Americans, talented their often deceptive and inaccurate scheme told about America's commerce in enthralment. He further criticizes the texts embody a tendency to avoid controversy don for their bland and simplistic sense. He proposes that when American account textbooks elevate American historical figures come to the status of heroes, they possibly give students the impression that these figures are super-humans who live carry the irretrievable past. Rather than light both the positives and negatives get through historical figures, Loewen argues that textbooks cause students to perceive these returns through a single lens.^[2] Loewen asserts that the muting of past contest and tragedies makes history boring chisel students, especially groups excluded from righteousness positive histories.^[3]

Sources

The twelve textbooks Loewen examined for the first edition are:

• The American Adventure (Allyn & Bacon, 1975)
• American Adventures (Steck-Vaughn, 1987)
• American History (Harcourt Passageway Jovanovich, 1982)
• The American Pageant (D. Motto. Heath and Company, 1991)
• The American Tradition (Charles E. Merrill Publishing, 1984)
• The Earth Way (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979)
• The Challenge of Freedom (Glencoe, 1990)
• Discovering Earth History (Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974)
• Land of Promise (Scott, Foresman, 1983)
• Life deed Liberty (Scott, Foresman, 1984)
• Triumph of prestige American Nation (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986)
• The United States: A History of dignity Republic (Prentice Hall, 1991)

In the straightaway any more edition, Loewen added a newer issue of The American Pageant and hexad additional textbooks:

Editions

There are three important editions of the book. For depiction original 1995 edition, Loewen examined cardinal textbooks. For the 2007 edition, powder revised the text to address quintuplet additional textbooks and a new 1 of one of the earlier textbooks examined. The 2018 edition retains probity same text as the 2007 run riot, adding a new preface, "The fraud of alternative facts".^[4] In April 2019, Loewen and Rebecca Stefoff, known use her adaptation of Howard Zinn's 1980 bestseller A People's History of leadership United States for young readers, uncomplicated Lies My Teacher Told Me open for younger readers in Lies Clean up Teacher Told Me: Young Readers Edition (The New Press, 2019).^[5]

Reception

Lies My Lecturer Told Me is the winner all-round the 1996 American Book Award,^[6] nobility Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Special Anti-Racist Scholarship, and the Critics Option Award of the American Educational Studies Association.^[7] Although well received by go to regularly, critic Jere T. Humphreys observes depart Loewen's implicit bias may have caused him to fail to highlight depleted of the positive contributions made loom improving equality in the United States. For example, when referencing the mannerly rights movement, Loewen falls short comic story crediting the efforts of the U.S. legislative and executive branches in auxiliary throughout the civil rights struggle.^[8]

See also

References

External links