This is actually another book recommendation, not a story about part of my life.
Lies My History Teacher Told Me is a book by James Loewen, a college professor of history. What he does is review twelve American history textbooks, and he reveals that none of them are accurate about American history. All of them omit facts, make random assumptions and tell outright lies. Loewen also proves that each history textbook presents its own facts as the way American history really happened (and many have different facts), thus showing that history can be incredibly controversial. Before I read through it, I never even knew Helen Keller was a radial socialist or Woodrow Wilson was a white supremist.
Iâd recommend this to anyone who enjoys history, and I was also wondering if anyone HAD read it already. It also proves that history is very undermined in the United States (then again, so are most other subjects).
I read it. Sometimes it doesnât focus so much on the lies of teachers and textbooks but rather the omissions, which for the most part, are far more interesting than what the text books say.
For example, Helen Keller, a renowned woman for many reasons, was a registered socialist and atteneded several communist rallies.
Iâve never read the book but this reminds me of something I learned in history. One of the Sufferagettes (I forget which one) was racist and warned of the threat of the Yellow and Black Empires.
Interesting⊠tho, a bit on the lies thing: why do you accept this book as the truth, but not one of the other 12 history books? Iâm not saying that the book is wrong, but you have to think first, if THIS book says THAT book is lying about history, this also implies that THAT book says THIS book is lying. But since history is something of the past, and all records are biased in some form or another, itâs hard to know which one is true. It could be Lies My History Teacher Told Me tells the absolute truth, but it could just as well be one of the other 12 books that he examined.
Omissions are not just possible, but probable, and not only for âthis book only has a limited amount of pagesâ reasons. They might give the person the book is promoting as âgoodâ, a âbadâ image. However, I really wouldnât believe much of what anyone would say are âliesâ about a period in the past that had happened so long ago, that thereâs no one still living that have witnessed the event. Youâll just have to take everything with a grain of salt.
Much of the facts presented in the book are cited with sources, so if you doubt them you can look them up yourself. The facts go towards proving illegitimate omissions and misrepresentations of facts in american history text books. Such omissions make America look bad, and are omitted from modern retelling of our history. Events such as an invasion of Russia during the cold war (which was based on an oddly ironic intelligence snafu, as was an invasion of Mexico during the Wilson administration.)
Speaking of the Wilson adminstration, most textbooks talk all about how Wilson was an idealist and how is idealist philosophies helped the country progress towards unification, where as Wilson stands as the only president in history to try to segregate government jobs. He is also cited as praising the most racist film in history, which name I forget, as something of a glorious and magnificent retelling of American history.
I remember some quote going something to the effect of: âThose that win the wars make the history.â Of course we havenât won every war though. I wonder how other countriesâ history textbooks show events.
[QUOTE=Sorcerer]Much of the facts presented in the book are cited with sources, so if you doubt them you can look them up yourself.[QUOTE]
Well, all I was saying is that is it possible that the other 12 history books are also based on sources you can look up? If so, then which sources should you believe in? If you go back in American History past say⊠the First World War, I doubt there would be anyone that have acutally lived during that era, so the credibility of any documented source should all be questioned at least a bit. Even if you DID have a couple people who lived through an era of history they still could not tell you the WHOLE story, since everyone is biased one way or another.
So, basically, what Iâm trying to say is, dont believe everything a history book says, even if it promises that it reveals the real truth about something. They could be generaly true, but some points could be the same lie that it was trying to overthrow anyways.
