James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me

In a subject where bland and seemingly useless facts are dominant, most American high school students call history their least favorite subject. In Lies my Teacher Told Me, James Loewen thinks teachers also feel the same disinterest on their side and eventually just give up. It becomes boring and because of these reasons, the spark of interest quickly diminishes and the student feels as though there is nothing left but to dislike the subject. The textbooks are more or less a bland regurgitation of information that students feel no connection to. They have an air of confidence that claims all information presented is factually and definitively correct. They provide no room for the student to analyze and interpret the facts for their own. Loewen believes American history textbooks are trying to dupe students with their cheery attitude of the great feats American leaders and heroes accomplished. Along with the great “progress” Americans have been making and the patriotic nature of the subject itself, high schoolers know to think differently about the myths they learn at school. More likely than not, they feel betrayed after they realize much of the history they had to learn is false.
Yet history has been traditionally taught like this for decades now. The textbooks play a …show more content…
We shouldn’t be presented with false information and then told later on that all we have learned is wrong. Students shouldn’t be forced to learn history in order to become well-disciplined citizens of the United States. History should be something that everyone should be able to relate to because it involves every race, ethnicity, gender, and religion. It’s the story of the wrongdoings and the accomplishments made by people who should be despised or revered. Moreover, it should be a story that students can be able to realize that they have the power to control through their own actions and