Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen, is a critical review of the gulf between the best evidence available to historians and the evidence presented to American high school students in the twelve most popular history textbooks. It is the winner of the 1996 American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship.

Loewen proposes that when history teachers elevate American historical figures to the status of heroes, they unintentionally give students the impression that these figures were part of an unattainable past. In other words, the history-as-myth method teaches students that America's greatest days are behind it. If textbooks and teachers were honest about historical controversies and the flaws of our nation's heroes, Loewen proposes that students would be left with the impression that America is a nation forever learning and improving and that its best days are still to come.

References

• Amazon.com information
• Loewen, James. W., Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your History Textbook Got Wrong (1996), ISBN 0684818868.

1995 books | History books | Education reform | Educational materials