Lies My Teacher Told Me

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

Cover of the 1995 edition
Author	James W. Loewen
Country	United States
Language	English
Subject	American history, Historiography, Native American history, African American history
Publisher	The New Press
Publication date	1995
Pages	383
ISBN	978-1-56584-100-0
OCLC	29877812
Dewey Decimal	973 20
LC Class	E175.85 .L64 1995
Followed by	Lies Across America: What Our Historic Sites Get Wrong

Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong is a 1995 book by James W. Loewen, a sociologist. It critically examines twelve American history textbooks and concludes that textbook authors propagate false, Eurocentric and mythologized views of history. In addition to his critique of the dominant historical themes presented in textbooks, Loewen presents themes that he says are ignored by traditional history textbooks. A revised hardcover edition was released on April 1, 2008. The New Press lists Lies My Teacher Told Me as its top all-time bestseller.^[1]

Themes

In Lies My Teacher Told Me, Loewen criticizes modern American history textbooks for containing incorrect information about people and events such as Christopher Columbus, the lies and inaccuracies in the history books regarding the dealings between the Europeans and the Native Americans, and their often deceptive and inaccurate teachings told about America's commerce in slavery. He further criticizes the texts for a tendency to avoid controversy and for their "bland" and simplistic style. He proposes that when American history textbooks elevate American historical figures to the status of heroes, they unintentionally give students the impression that these figures are superhumans who live in the irretrievable past. In other words, the history-as-myth method teaches students that America's greatest days have already passed. Loewen asserts that the muting of past clashes and tragedies makes history boring to students, especially groups excluded from the positive histories.^[2]

Sources

The twelve textbooks Loewen examined for the first edition are:

• The American Adventure (1975)
• American Adventures (1987)
• American History (1982)
• The American Pageant (1991)
• The American Tradition (1984)
• The American Way (1979)
• The Challenge of Freedom (1990)
• Discovering American History (1974)
• Land of Promise (1983)
• Life and Liberty (1984)
• Triumph of the American Nation (1986)
• The United States: A History of the Republic (1991)

In the second edition, Loewen added a newer edition of The American Pageant and five additional textbooks:

• The American Pageant (2006)
• The American Journey (2000)
• The Americans (2007)
• America: Pathways to the Present (2005)
• A History of the United States (2005)
• Holt American Nation (2003)

Reception

Lies my Teacher Told Me is the winner of the 1996 American Book Award,^[3] the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship, and the Critics Choice Award of the American Educational Studies Association.^[4]

Conservative activist David Horowitz has criticized the book, calling it an "extreme and ill-informed polemic".^[5]

References

External links

• Official website
• Booknotes interview with Loewen on Lies, March 26, 1995.