James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me

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After reading the book Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen, I analyzed several chapters of a U.S. history textbook to compare them to the claims that Loewen made in his book. Upon completion of this task, it seems that there is quite a bit of truth to the problems that Loewen saw in these textbooks, but there are also some examples that contradict the things that he stated. I agree with Loewen in regards to his criticisms that there is a lot of useless information included in these textbooks, and that the ending of the books are too optimistic, but his criticisms of the representation of John Brown and Abraham Lincoln didn't apply to my textbook. While reading through the first chapter of the history textbook, The American Nation, it became apparent …show more content…
In one of the last paragraphs of the book it says, "The United States faces complex issues and great dangers in the new century. Yet, Americans have met such challenges before." This paragraph then went on to discuss an example of how the American people rallied together and overcame all odds to become the "superpower" that we are today. This wildly optimistic view of our country today simply isn't beneficial to students. The chapter briefly discussed some of the more recent problems that the country is facing, but quickly went on to insinuate that all will be well as long as the American people stick together. This sort of ending fell right into Loewen's critique of the final chapters in textbooks, because they really don't do anything to promote critical thinking from students, and they don't encourage students to connect the problems of the past with our future. If we simply continue to tell students that our problems can always be overcome, then it won't stimulate them to do anything to change the issues that we are currently
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