• DOI:10.1177/153660060302500107
• Corpus ID: 219974867

Book Review: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

@article{Humphreys2003BookRL,
  title={Book Review: Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong},
  author={Jere T. Humphreys},
  journal={Journal of Historical Research in Music Education},
  year={2003},
  volume={25},
  pages={60 - 68}
}

• J. Humphreys
• Published 1 October 2003
• Sociology
• Journal of Historical Research in Music Education

In this book's introduction, James W Loewen describes his survey oftwelve high school American history textbooks published between 1974 and 1991, inclusively. Through his sometimes light-in-tone but unusually hard-hitting narrative, the author provides information and insights that all Americans would do well to consider, especially those without college-level training or the equivalent in American history. Along the way, he indicts the authors and publishers of these textbooks for what he sees as the sorry state of American history education in the nation's high schools. He asserts that "history is the only field in which the more courses [high school] students take, the stupider they become" (p. 2). Loewen cites studies whose results reveal that "African American, Native American, and Latino students view history with a special dislike." They make only slightly lower grades than white students in high school mathematics, but much lower grades in history. However, white students also "hate history," and consider it "the most irrelevant' of twenty-one subjects commonly taught in high school" (p. 1). The author believes that college history courses and textbooks are generally sound, but, unfortunately, only one American adult in six takes even one American history course beyond high school. Consequently, some observers charge that the United States suffers from a larger gap between what the general population knows and what professional historians know than any other country. Loewen argues that high school American history textbooks "seldom use the past to illuminate the present," but instead "portray the past as a simpleminded morality play" in which "every problem has already been solved or is about to be solved." He accuses the authors ofnationalism and charges that they attempt to "indoctrinate blind patriotism." He asserts that they provide far too much and too favorable coverageofthe American federal government, especially the executive branch. Indeed, even the "titles themselves tell the story," with their "covers, graced as they are with American flags, bald eagles, the Statue of Liberty" (pp. 2-3). The author states that "history is a furious debate informed by evidence and reason," but "textbooks,"with their "godlike tone," "encouragestudents to believe that history is facts to be learned" (p, 5). With an average length of888 pages