...Lies My Teacher Told Me is a courageous piece of nonfiction written by James W. Loewen, sociologist and author. Loewen grew up in Decatur, Illinois to a librarian and teacher for a mother, and a medical director for a father. Starting off as a National Merit Scholar from MacArthur igh School, he went on to obtain a doctorate degree in sociology at Harvard University. Loewen has taught at a historically black college in Mississippi and also at the University of Vermont where he taught about race relations for 20 years. Before writing, Lies My Teacher Told Me, Loewen co-wrote Mississippi: Conflict and Change, a United States history textbook. He fought for its right for use in public schools, and won with a radical victory. James Loewen, only then went on to write Lies My Teacher Told Me, with the intention of letting...
Words: 574 - Pages: 3
...In the book “Lies My Teacher Told Me” written by James Loewen which as you would infer explores the ideas of lies that teachers a textbooks leave out throughout your education. One of these interesting topics explored is the ideas that Loewen presents in his analysis of the Gettysburg Address which was given in November 1863 by Abraham Lincoln which was only 273 words but is considered one of the most important speeches in American history highlighted the need for human equality by referring back to the Declaration of Independence and referring to this contradiction between this. Loewen creates an analysis of the address with a very high opinion on Lincoln stating right off the bat saying “Abraham Lincoln was one of the great masters of the English Language. Perhaps more than any other president he invoked and manipulated powerful symbols in his speeches to move public opinion” (Loewen 185). He then refers to the idea of textbooks not referring to address well enough referring to the idea of “authorial monotone” he...
Words: 504 - Pages: 3
...In Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James Loewen, writer and sociology professor, details the way in which high school curriculums are distorting reality. He focuses heavily on the Pilgrims and the first European settlers of America. He gives copious details about the factual history of Plymouth Rock and compares it to the innocuous fables of the history textbooks. The consolidated, America-can-do-no-wrong revisions of Social Study curriculums give students an incomplete and misinformed historical perspective. To say that the American history textbooks are misrepresentative would be a gross understatement. In an attempt to promote unquestioning nationalism, history books have robbed students of the most valuable aspect of learning about America’s past, the means to not repeat the folly of our progenitors. Loewen presents his thesis with effective elegance: “Whether one deems our present society wondrous or awful or both, history reveals how we arrived at this point. Understanding...
Words: 1147 - Pages: 5
...“Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can’t buy enough to eat.” (Loewen, 204) These powerful words spoken by Will Rogers produce an extremely valid question, yet many teens today are not taught the answer. In James W. Loewen’s “Lies My Teacher Told Me” it is explained that America is not the land of opportunity. Most recent labor history such as during the late twentieth century is not mentioned in textbooks. This is an effort to maintain the impression that America has always been a land of upward social mobility. It is no secret that textbooks emphasize pieces of history in the favor of the wealthy. However, this is only done while downplaying bills which strengthen the wealthy at the poor’s expense. In the migrating...
Words: 335 - Pages: 2
...In chapter one of "Lies My Teacher Told Me" Loewen examines how historical figures are represented in modern textbooks. Loewen uses Woodrow Wilson and Hellen Keller to prove his claim that textbooks leave out information about historical figures, making them one dimensional and uninteresting. Loewen's first example is Hellen Keller. Everyone who has ever taken an American history class knows about how a blind and deaf Keller taught herself how to read and write. However Keller's legacy is far greater than what most textbooks will tell you. According to Loewen, "The truth is that Hellen Keller was a radical socialist."(13). Not only that, but Keller supported Unions, donated money to the NAACP, and even hung a red flag from her desk. None of this information is available in most textbooks though. Therefore I agree with Loewen's claim regarding Hellen Keller....
Words: 453 - Pages: 2
...For years history books has made Christopher Columbus a hero. A superhuman. Unless you read Columbus’s actual journal, you’ll always know the hero that Columbus was not. The source, Christopher Columbus’s journal, supports James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Book Got Wrong because Columbus’s journal and Loewen states that other people had already been to the land before he discovered it, the journal accurately describes how greedy Columbus was, and the journal states that the Europeans can hold the natives captive and force them to do whatever one might wish. James Loewen states that Columbus was no greedier than the Spanish, French, or the English, but the textbooks downplay the pursuit of wealth as a...
Words: 306 - Pages: 2
...personal experiences of oppression in his native country. The Brazilian educator devoted his life of adult literacy. Loewen essay “Lies My Teacher Told Me,” argues the American history textbooks have the wrong facts. The sociologist feels the American students are lied to and misled in their history classes. Freire and Loewen essays both are informative account of a failed education system. Although scholars capitalized education, they failed to apply the importance in one education system. Freire argues there are two types of conceptual tools; Banking concept of education and problem posting method. In the tradition type of education, however, the teacher stores the information the student listens. The goal of banking education was to immobilize the student within the existing structure conditioning them into memorize the materials (Freire.web). I felt the ability to overcome the fear of memorize the lesson. In a sense, we all are a result of banking the education. In my early days, in high school, I had some experience of understanding the lesson. Robinson 2 I can remember my history teacher given me an assignment to complete in class; of just what she went over. I struggled a bit, because Mrs. Hall was a fun teacher; she made lessons fun in class. In the reading, How Freire concept of education, he conveys the student does not think for themselves...
Words: 843 - Pages: 4
...pretty much all lies. If someone doesn’t know what you tell them is a lie, then it won’t hurt them. Everybody has told a lie at least once. Especially as a kids, when I was about to get in trouble my first instinct was to lie. Even adults do it when they are late for work. They tell their boss that they were stuck in traffic when they really overslept. It is true that everyone tells a lie at some point in time, but there is a fine line between being someone who tells a lie once in a while and being a liar. There are many types of lies. I tell white lies most often. Those types of lies just roll off the tongue so easily. A white lie assumes that the truth will cause more damage than a simple lie. So when my teacher asks me if I would like to help her carry her bags to her car I quickly say yes. When I know that I am tired and she just gave me a bad grade and I do not feel like helping her. If she knew how I really felt it would hurt her so I just smile and say yes. Another example is when your friend decides to try a new barber out and they ask you if their haircut is messed up or not. I hate to be the one to tell them that their cut is jacked up. So I tell a white lie and tell them that it looks good. Since I told the lie my friend feels much better about his cut and he doesn’t think about it anymore. As opposed to telling the truth and have him upset because he went to the barber. I am also guilty of telling the lie of omission. When my teachers ask me where I am going...
Words: 812 - Pages: 4
...EN106 20101103 Underlying Factors “Public school is a place or detentions for children placed in the care of teachers who are afraid of the principal, principals who are afraid of the school boards, school boards that are afraid of the parents, parents who are afraid of the children, and children who are afraid of nobody.” Anonymous Quote The educational system is broken: without identifying and reducing the factors that prevent students from learning, education best efforts become futile. There are approximately 3.2 million students graduating this year from urban American high schools. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, over 40 percent of these students will not be able to perform college-level work and most of them will require some type of remediation to be successful. Although Paulo Friere and James Loewen have clearly noted the faulty educational process based on learning patterns and inadequate materials; they may have overlooked other underlying factors that may indeed cause a deficit in the educational process and produce a lower standard of education. These factors include but are not limited to ethnic background and socioeconomic status and environment. After thoroughly researching supporting arguments to my theory that Friere and Loewen both overlooked socioeconomics and teacher / pupil relationship importance. I stumbled upon, “A Comparative Study of Pupils Perception of Pedagogic Process” (McNess) and “Effects of Neighborhood...
Words: 1278 - Pages: 6
...forms of learning. Students today are technophiles. They love their video games and they can’t put down their smart phones, iPods, and social networks. The challenge for working in the electronic age is that we have so much access to information but we still have the same brain we always had. The problem is not access to information. It is integrating that information and making sense out of it. Students must learn to use knowledge to achieve a goal. In order to learn the knowledge we need effective teachers. James Loewen in “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” talks about his educational views thru experience. Loewen states that “textbooks are boring.” (Loewen 386) Did anybody like textbooks as a child? He talks how the textbooks are huge and weigh at an average of four and a half pounds. Children do not want to even think about reading a book so big. Another point that Loewen states is “That students and teachers fall back on one main idea: to memorize the teams for the test following each chapter, then forget them to clear the synapses for the next chapter. Students exit history textbooks without having developed the ability to think coherently about social life.” (388) Children need to understand that history in not just historical facts but rather, a set of lenses for interpreting multiple and complex causes and effects to explain past and present conditions. Learning from these texts, so essential to success, requires...
Words: 1178 - Pages: 5
...method of teaching is “dehumanizing” in that it reduces students to “receptacles” whose only purpose in life is to be filled with information which is chosen by oppressors to be significant (Freire par. 4). Freire paints a picture of lifeless, mechanical, students, filing information into their brains without question or analysis; the very thing that he claims makes us human (par. 4,5). He asserts that this concept of education is oppressive by design. Indeed, it serves the oppressors’ goals in that “the more the oppressed can be led to adapt to (an environment where they question nothing), the more easily they can be dominated” (Freire par. 9). The control over educational subject matter plays a key role in oppression. Loewen's work Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong details this role. Although I agree with the ideas of Freire and Loewen, that public education is used as a means to dominate and oppress the masses, it is important to note that we have the power to overcome this ploy with parental involvement in our children's education. Because subjects such as mathematics and science can be undeniably verified, it is difficult to change the content of these subjects. However, because history is subjective to the...
Words: 906 - Pages: 4
...When, If Ever is a Lie Morally Permissible? Peggy Scott Phil 6 Symbolic Logic Summer Session B August 21, 2001 Chapters directed to: 1,2 and 3; Pg. 39-42 Conflicts of Duty, 4,7,11 Conclusion, Augustine, Aquinas & Kant Lying to protect the anonymity of Alcoholics Anonymous members and their families helps them join the group, recover and chart a new course for their lives. The few occasional lies necessary to keep their affiliation with the group private are morally acceptable, because society is safer if these people are in AA than if they are not in AA. Alcoholics have very little chance of staying sober without AA, and they often do terrible things to anyone in their path when they are drunk. Anonymity encourages participation in AA for both new and continuing members, and fewer would join and stay sober if they had to bear the burden of public knowledge of their condition. As a matter of public policy, our communities are generally strong supporters of AA, providing meeting rooms, considerable goodwill and privacy for over fifty years now. AA and the public both benefit by every alcoholic who quits drinking, because a sober drunk is a safer drunk. When we look to the individual level, what's in the best interest of the public and what’s best for the sober alcoholic are often diametrically opposed. The legal, social and economic repercussions for having identified oneself as an alcoholic could be devastating to a sober alcoholic person if this information...
Words: 3543 - Pages: 15
...similarities of the issues in this movie has happened in life recently with a Man named Eric Garner who choked to death by white NYC police men for nothing which took the nation by storm the comparison between Eric Garner # I CAN’T BREATHE and Radio is that they both were killed by white police officers for no reason at all. “Violence is a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral”. – Martin Luther King Jr. Being black and knowing what it is like to wake up in sweat with no AC, White police riding in your neighborhood with eyes fill with malice and hate written on their faces watching the black men and children on the block. Racism is the thing that will never go away in this country, it has been built on racism and lies its being black, certain jobs will not hire you just because they will not tell you that. But deep down that is the unspoken true to the issue. A...
Words: 1066 - Pages: 5
...spiraling lies they have told to their parents yet failing miserably--basically things that would trigger a cringe attack. I, however, have near to no recollection of what I have regretted doing. I had no regrets. Instead, I had a big ball of regret called my existence. Like many, I pretty appreciative of what I’ve had when I was little. I had the picture-perfect family, a camaraderie of friends, and more than enough sustenance. My brother and I would always be greeted with a lively sense of energy when we came home after school. Food would always be hot and ready on the dining table, my bed would have been made nicely, and my once disarray of toys,...
Words: 914 - Pages: 4
...poetry’s origin dates back before the dawn of literacy, it is still more of an auditory art form than a written one. In the earliest days of the art form, poems were recited or sung. Even today, at clubs and coffeehouses around the world, aspiring artists approach microphones and recite their poetry to their audiences. Poetry, more than any other form of literature, is written for the ear rather than the eye. Put another way, by The Norton Anthology of Poetry, “A poem is a composition written for performance by the human voice.” (Ferguson, Salter, & Stallworthy, p. 2027) For this reason, the poet takes great care to craft his or her work so that it has the desired effect on the audience. In Thomas Wyatt’s 16th-century poem, “They Flee From Me,” the narrator is remembering something he has lost, and the form of the poem does an effective job of conveying the speaker’s sorrow at this loss. “With naked foot” At the beginning of the poem, it would be easy to infer that the narrator is referring to some sort of animal. “I have seen them gentle tame and meek/That now are wild and do not remember.” (Wyatt, p. 127) However, the term “naked foot” in the second line offers a clue that the narrator is speaking of a human being. He did not, after all, use an animal term like “hoof” or “paw.” The beings that used to visit the narrator’s chamber are likely human. “The anguish none can draw” The second stanza of the poem begins, “Hidden in the cap/Is the anguish none can draw.” Perhaps...
Words: 886 - Pages: 4
