Lies My Teacher Told Me

Couldn't get into it. It is a very dry read

Zeer fascinerende filering van de geschiedenisboeken die in Amerika worden gebruikt bij het middelbare onderwijs. Zoals je uit de titel van dit boek kunt afleiden: dat zit niet echt lekker, met die boeken.

“When you're publishing a book, if there's something that is controversial, it's better to take it out”, aldus een van de uitgevers.

“The result is a treatment of the recent past along the line suggested by Thumper's mum: ‘If you can't say something nice, don't say nothing at all.'” aldus de schrijver van dit boek ...

Door het onderwerp wel heel erg op Amerika gericht (duh), maar omdat het goed uitlegt wat de geschiedenisboeken fout doen (en hoe het wel zit) ook nog eens inhoudelijk zeer leerzaam.

Nu maar hopen dat het in Nederland niet zo erg is :-)

I wish I had this book when I was in high school, before I took any history classes. The book lays out many of the “lies” people in the US learn about our history in great detail in the first part of the book. So much detail, that I was wondering how he could fit everything in at the rate he was covering issues, but I guess that would be an impossible task, he just covers the most glaring problems. Then, at the end he walks through what he thinks could change in our educational system. I was less into the latter portion most of the way through, but by the end I was feeling hopeful that at least some of the changes would come to pass. Now, I'll pass this book on to my friends and family, I think anyone can learn something from this book!

Not only should everyone read this book for the insight into history that they may or may not know (much in the style of “stuff you missed in history class,”), they should read it for the second layer, the meta one, that of how this flawed history is chosen and pruned from the author all the way down to the teacher level.

Must read for every American. I read the revised version, which doesn't seem to be on Good Reads.

Long but completely worth it. Very helpful in developing or applying critical thinking to ‘facts.'

Not sure I by this book story. The author compares the “real” story with 12 textbooks. It's all over the place and I think inconsistent logic. For example, he spends a fair about of time about the racism of Woodrow Wilson then complains that the textbooks don't mention it. I say “so what”. It was not key to his presidency and in 1900's most people were pretty racist in post civil war years. I don't consider that a “Lie My Teacher Told Me”. But he goes on and on about Christopher Columbus and the plague and how people “idolize” him. This one I do agree the there is LOTS of false information that needs to be corrected. My summary is that most of what he complains about is not the purpose of the discussion in textbooks anyway. It's more a matter of opinion in how much they could add in the context of a textbook but not really “Lie's”.

Very interesting description of the pieces of history left out of (or completely distorted by) high-school U.S. history books. The analysis throughout the book about what this incomplete picture does to the way students think has really made me think a lot about what I accept as true and what I need to understand better.

If it didn't have the last three or four chapters, it would be a five star book. The last couple of chapters are all about the missing recent history that is taught in school. And I'm like, well, that's what I'm missing, too! So, I didn't really get to learn about those things that I missed in school, which sucks, because we all have a big gap.

Otherwise, it was well-written and a compelling argument for new history books and new history teaching methods.

If you're looking for an unbiased, fast-paced narrative of history this is not the book. Though Lies My Teacher Told Me tries to sell itself as the above, such a description is inaccurate. It promises to be the history book for “anyone who has ever fallen asleep in history class.” Truth is, if you don't like dry, academic reading this book will be a chore

Lies... is not fast-paced and it is not without bias, but it is a wonderfully fresh take on history. And Loewen's point that the history of American textbooks is boring for many people is true. Personally, I enjoyed history until about the age of twelve, then it became tiresome for me. I couldn't explain why, but reading Lies... made it clear—it's the same repetitive story of world needs help, white man arrives on scene, very minor conflict occurs, white man saves the future. Really, that is the basis of every historical story I knew in my school days. When I went to college, I refused to take any history course. I was fed up with history. At the time, I felt fortunate that there were enough alternative choices to satisfy that tract of my general ed. requirements. Now I wonder if I missed out, or if it would've been more of the same.

Lies... is in no way all inclusive. Loewen picks a small selection of historical events that he seems most familiar with. Using a massive sampling of sources, both past and contemporary, Loewen rewrites these events in a manner much closer to truth. He steers away from many events that one may think would be full of discrepancy, but it is not difficult for a reader to surmise what likely happened.

For anyone who has questioned the telling of history or done research of their own on the subject, many of Loewen bigger points will be redundant. It is the smaller details—the journals and articles from the people who actually lived through these events—that make this book so shocking. His liberal “white man is bad” tone will anger some. For others it will finally tell history from a unique perspective, one that is infinitely more colorful.

While the book does expose lies, many of them aren't nation wide phenomena (I remember elementary school textbooks, some published decades ago, that did present truthfully the facts).

Also, the author seems to have an agenda of nonconformist, disillusioned anti-capitalism (I almost included a spoilers alert...)

Fortunately, the author only makes his agenda clear in the last 30% of the book, and the first 70% are an unadulterated, fun and informative reading.

A classic, well written critique of the way we teach history in American public schools and its social and political consequences. For me the biggest revelation of this book was realizing that most Americans do not study history past high school. (I know, that's an incredibly naive, elitist thing to be surprised by, but I hadn't really thought it through before.) I've always known that grade school history textbooks were problematic, but of course students are taught more than just that, right? Unfortunately, for many students, the answer is no. And that is scary.