Or at least it is when it was taught to me in High School. It was always so dry. I had only one teacher who taught history in such a way that made it interesting and from her class come my only High School memories of American history. I remember learning about the New Deal, FDR and the TVA (include environmental impacts, both good and bad). Interestingly enough, this teacher taught the remedial history class and requested that I be placed in the advanced history class. The advanced class a struggle, not because the course work was difficult but because I was in a constant battle with the teacher. My first paper for her was returned 3 or 4 times for revisions; I finally returned a clean copy of the original paper and was given a B+. I’m still not sure what she was trying to prove. Anyways.
I did end up with a B.A. in History but not in American History. My first history class in college was a Gen. Ed. course in World History and part of what made it so interesting was the question, ‘Why’. For example, the professor, whenever we started a new section, would ask the political and physical environment the culture lived in. Fine but after we (or I. I’m not sure anyone else ever spoke up in the class) told him he’d always ask why these were important. The answer always revolved around the idea that no one lives in a bubble. People’s lives are constantly conflicting with our natural environment and other people.
I never thought of American history as being made up of conflict. This book helps explain why. To sum it up, teachers teach from textbooks most often because it easiest and textbooks are piles of trash (at least history text books). They do not have any conflict and they are blatantly euro-centric, which makes them unrealistic, boring (would you read a suspense novel with no suspense?) and offensive to people of non-European decent. They can also be seen as offensive to women, poor people and religious minorities (Catholics, Jews, Atheists, e&c.).
The book starts by poking holes in 12 major text books; exposing blatant lies, misquotations, lack of quotations, misrepresentation of facts and suppression of the minority. An example from a favorite period of my own, is the representation of Helen Keller as a hard working cripple who succeeded in overcoming her physical disabilities, here’s what I would take as an example of what a text book might have. But the author Loewen asks is what about the rest of Keller’s life? What about when she realized that the majority of blind people were poor and that most, if not all of them would never received the education and help she did? What about her political activities? Loewen goes on from there to talk about Columbus, Indian relations, the Civil War, Racial relations and how modern history is simply not taught (did you ever get to the end of a text book?).
The book ends with an attempt at figuring out why text books are so bad and how bad text books affect students. This was probably the most pertinent part of the book but I found it the least interesting. After seeing how American history is being mistaught it is easy for me to see a need to change it, but then again there have been several attempts to make the teaching of biology a farce too so maybe defending the teaching of truth is necessary. Teaching lies can only make people more distrustful which can only have a negative effect on society.
I would recommend this book to anyone who wants a good read on American history (as a great deal of it is dealt with in the book) or who is simply interested in figuring out what they missed out on because of High School.
Like a meirkat eating a shit donut
