Lies

This word is used in many books. For example– Lies the church has told women, lies the church told me and on it goes. We picked up one such book, Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen, and started to read it.

This work is a 364-page book, not including the notes, about how bad textbooks are. He could have made his point in 1 or 2 chapters but the reader is subjected to the author’s subjective main point for 13 chapters.

We got it in the first chapter, according to the author textbooks are bad and lie to students. But his thesis is misleading as the author ignores the purpose of textbooks.

The purpose is not to do graduate studies in history but to give the students an idea of different historical events. Then the student is free to continue his or her studies in history in post-secondary school studies or not.

Textbooks are not designed to be graduate-level study books. Instead, they simply open the door and provide a starting point for the student to move on from. Some do and some don’t.

Don’t blame the textbook or the teacher for the student failing to continue his studies on those important historical topics. The students’ decisions are not the responsibility of the teacher or the textbooks.

Given the fact that the elementary & secondary school teachers have only 8-9 months to teach and the fact that they do not have history classes every day or even if they do, the topic of history spans 5000 years.

That is too much subject matter to do what that author wants. Also given the fact that the teacher is not always free to discuss what happened in history, it is impossible to meet the demands of that author (and in his afterward, he makes many ‘suggestions’ or demands).

Then to charge the teachers with lying is wrong. The author is 1). idealistic in what teachers can or cannot do; and 2). unrealistic. One of the problems with the author is he was not a history teacher or professor per see. His short bio on the back cover says he was a professor of sociology at the U. of Vermont.

In 2007, (the 2nd Edition of the book) he is listed as a professor of emeritus of sociology. He may have taught some history classes and studied it but he had the time and the freedom to do that. Most secondary teachers who use the textbooks he does not like do not.

They have other demands on their time that the school administration, the state, and federal governments place on their shoulders. And while we will agree that the author includes some good research in his book and he may be correct on certain issues with textbooks, he makes many mistakes.

The first mistake is that he mentions several times that historians do not agree. He is not presenting the truth but the controversy and he wants teachers to teach the controversy. Why should they?

The teacher’s job is to teach the truth and the controversy only hides the truth. It does not illuminate it. The second mistake he makes is that he accepts certain research as gospel without even taking the time to prove it is true.

He condemns the textbooks for failing to do good research before writing their content, yet does the same thing himself. He does this on pg. 81. Also, he gets technical as he spends the first chapter on Columbus.

We all know the weakness of the word ‘discover’ and the author uses that word to discredit someone who died 500 years before the author was born. What the author fails to realize is that Columbus and other Europeans thought he made a discovery and probably were not aware of the other people who came to the Americas prior to his voyage.

Columbus, etc., was not wrong in thinking they made a discovery. It was new to them. And it was a discovery. What may be wrong is the fact that following generations credited Columbus for being the first person to come to the Americas.

But this topic can get too technical and far too long to include in history textbooks. It is a difficult subject to discuss as there are so many mitigating factors on both sides of the issue.

To demand that textbooks discuss this delicate problem is unrealistic, especially when historians disagree on what took place in the past. Picking one historian over one that the author favors is not wrong but doing the exact same thing that the author does. He chose which ones he felt were right.

He never proved his historians were telling the truth and he didn’t prove the historians the textbooks chose were perpetuating a falsehood. The author does state that he uses primary sources but he did not prove that he did not manipulate those primary sources or that he did not take them out of context.

While quoting Columbus’ own writings, those quotes are vulnerable to the historians’ or author’s interpretation. How do we know the author got it right? We just have his word on it.

On page 64, he talks about how modern nations view Columbus as that is some determining factor in what happened in history. So what if Mexico and other modern countries do not like Columbus. That does not change the fact of the importance of his voyage.

One man’s hero is another man’s enemy and just ask all the people ruled by dictators to see this point is true. We may denounce Columbus, not based on what the modern countries think of him but on what he did during his time in the lands he came to.

We can go on pointing out these errors on the part of the author but we will only do 2 more. On page 97, the author puts in quote the words Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Then he places the endnote number 15 after that sentence. He does NOT put quotes around those words signaling they’re too original with him and they are not. Those words were first used by Kenneth Kitchen an Egyptologist.

Then we checked the endnote page and found that he does not credit Mr. Kitchen (he is not a Ph.D. or holds any other doctoral degree), with those words. That blew his credibility completely and makes his point of view just another person who doesn’t like what textbooks are doing and wants his way used instead.

Not crediting the original speaker for quoted words used is a big scholarly error that has gotten many professors in trouble. He stole to make his point.

The final error we will point out that ruins his point of view is on pg. 355 where he quotes Anatole France which reads– “Do not try to satisfy your vanity by teaching a great many things. Awaken people’s curiosity. It is enough to open people’s minds; do not overload them.

The author violates that quote by overloading his book with information even though he only is trying to make one point over and over with too much information and personal bias. We will get to that last bit in a minute.

He is using that quote to make his point that textbooks are wrong. However, the textbooks are doing exactly what that quote says. In all the textbooks, they are only opening the students’ minds to awaken them to different topics of history.

They are not overloading the students but giving them the opportunity to see the value of history then giving the student free choice to pursue different historical topics.

It does not do what the author does, browbeat readers until they come to their point of view. Yes, the textbooks may have gotten some things wrong but so do the author and other historians.

With their different point of view, they all can’t be right. The author sure isn’t as his personal bias against religion in general and Christianity specifically ruins his historical work.

He is not being honest and refuses to accept that Christians may be right and that he is wrong. He has painted a broad brush against Christian of the past and misleads his readers which is very wrong. But it is a charge he has laid against the textbooks.

He should have cleaned up his house first before attacking textbooks.

This author is being used as an example for all the other authors who do the same things. We are not sure if this author is still alive or not and this analysis is moot in that regard. But it helps other people who read similar works. They need to spot the errors so they do not get misled about the past.

As usual, the author is also like many archaeologists who use archaeology to support their points of view. Archaeology is infallible when it supports them and incomplete when it does not.

Trying to have it both ways is wrong as well. One last thing that bothers us about this book is his final sentence on page 354: ” Students will start finding history interesting when their teachers and textbooks stop lying to them”

That is arrogant and condescending as it charges both with a ‘crime’ that most teachers and textbooks are innocent of. Yes, both may make mistakes but mistakes are not lies.