Lies My Teacher Told me (Chapter 12)

This chapter responds to a question that has been unanswered for eleven chapters: Why is history taught like this? My hypothesis was that textbook authors do their best to avoid including anything controversial or extreme to satisfy any readers. In fact, it states that "publishers produce textbooks with several audiences in mind." Loewen has been also stating that textbooks tend to be biased since the majority of the authors are usually whites and conceal painful illustrations of slavery or unjust discrimination against African Americans. Other chapters include description of how certain historical figures get more attention than others, what Columbus and other settlers did to Native Indians, or the truths of the Vietnam War. As Loewen says, history textbooks failed to grab my attention and made me become a passive learner of American history. My high school history teachers must have done their best to make the topic interesting but my interest toward American history was unmoved. In comparison, this book uncovers many censored information that made this book intriguing.

This chapter was relatively harder to write a blog post about because it is a sum-up of previous eleven chapters, but there were still some details I had reactions to. Loewen acknowledges that textbook authors cannot include every event but it does not take much space and time to explain that Helen Keller was a social activist. Yet we have been only told that she was a deaf and blind woman. Probably no one can reject what George Orwell stated in his book 1984, "Who controls the present controls the past." This phrase reminds me of LLA lecture on MSM censorship Rab has given us; media controls the present and controls what information we get about the recent past. Next interesting point was how An Inconvenient Truth involves with this. I wrote a book report on this but never knew that it was initially refused by NSTA for its "unnecessary risk upon the capital campaign." An educational association like NSTA is responsible for censoring academic writings or reports that possible have harmful effects on the national economy or politics, or themselves. In this case, NSTA was receiving $6 million from Exxon Mobil.

Additionally, regardless of living in the U.S. for 14 years, I have never known the existence of textbook adoption boards in many states. The level of censorship, types of textbook used at school and criteria for length, coverage and reading level all vary depending on the states. The state I lived in, New Jersey, has an adoption board apparently, so I am curious how much information was censored compared any other states without adoption boards. I am interested to ask this question to my history teacher at high school, if she lets me ask it. The last thing I found interesting in this chapter is the correspondence of parents about their children getting taught by these textbooks. There was a survey conducted in the late 1970s that asked parents whether they believe authorities and want children to believe them. Surprisingly, more than half the parents do not want their children to doubt the authority while they themselves do. All adults are hindrance for children to learn. Is there any solution, and do children need to keep learning American history mostly composed of lies? Apparently, next chapter would explain why they don't.