Talk:Lies My Teacher Told Me/Archive 1

Archive 1

Section summaries

Should there be a section discussing each of the major controversies he addresses? ThuranX 03:15, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Bias?

The entry for this book is essentially an advertisement for the authenticity and relevance of the book. There is no balanced appraisal.

I will confess a bias against the book, not merely because I am a high school history teacher but also because of the manner of research Loewen engages in. The twelve textbooks Loewen uses to make his point are published in the years 1975, 1987, 1982, 1991, 1984, 1979, 1990, 1974, 1983, 1984, 1986, 1981. In my copy of his book, the copyright is 1995 and it states "First Touchstone Edition 1996". A book published in the 1990s using three books from the 1970s, seven books from the 1980s, and just two books from the 1990s should raise suspicions as to distortion through selection. Any decent university library with a respected department of education will have a much better, more timely sample of textbooks to reference.

I have also read concerns by others a time or two while searching the internet about various aspects of the book. I know I'm very concerned with Loewen's inability to appreciate the distinction between United States History and World History, his desire to throw everything and the kitchen sink into a textbook bloated with content used in a classroom struggling to find the time to digest the information, and I am also concerned with his desire to include into the text, historical positions outside the range of what comes close to historical consensus.

I am not proposing the entry be an attack on the book but it should be neutral. Either the entry should be essentually a factual description of the book or it should include a section concerning opposing viewpoints as to the quality of the book.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by HSHistTeacher (talk • contribs) 17:48, 3 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, at least you can admit you're biased! The only problem I see with your argument is that the major theme of Loewen's book (which I have read twice now) is accurate. Hitory as tuaght in public schools (elementary and secondary) now is incomplete and often inaccurate. It is Euro-centric as well. Students are given only one side of an event, person, etc. I do agree that some of Loewen's research may seem flawed, such as his quote of Woodrow Wilson after seeing The Birth of a Nation, but overall I believe this book does a good job of debunking many of the popular claims about history. I think a topic by topic breakdown of this book and the claims it purports would allow a good opportunity to portray the book more accurately as well as allow for reasonable discourse (or criticisms if you prefer) of the work. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 204.17.26.4 (talk • contribs) 21:09, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

er... right now the current entry for this book is very stupid. I dont think the person that wrote it even read the book *_* it states direct contradictions to the actual book but i cant fix it, if it sounds like my essay ill get killed for plagiarizing —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 66.32.47.109 (talk • contribs) 00:40, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm a high school students and we use some pretty outdated textbooks sometimes. The book was published in 1995, it probably took him years of research and years of reading in order to disect the 12 text books. On top of that, the 1970s weren't that far off, and the millions of students that read those books are screwed up today. In my AP US History class (which I took this last school year) we used the American Pageant, and although it might be less biased than other books, I can totally see the faults in that book after i started reading Lies My Teacher Told me, and just from doing my own studying outside of the book. In my world history class the previous year, our textbooks were even more biased. So it's still very much a problem. I can tell you taht reading Loewen's books certainly clears up a lot of questions I had earlier about history. I think it's sad that you're a history teacher if you don't teach your students the truth. 71.104.198.83 07:55, 16 August 2006 (UTC)Ricardo

I'm a junior in highscool reading this book in 2006 and I can tell you that all the history books I've had throughout my school career made the same mistakes Loewen discusses. Not to mention that some schools DO use old books, during the 2000-2001 school year my class had textbooks from 1987. And as someone said before, those who are adults now will have used the older textbooks when they were in school. 66.31.173.139 02:10, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

The current edition of the book (2007) is greatly expanded and references an additional six history books, all published since 1995. Also, to be clear, Loewen's beef is apparently with high school history books and not the way history is taught in colleges and universities. 151.205.186.4 (talk) 13:26, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

You might want to re-read, as should the author of the article. I am an AP US History teacher and Loewen is VERY critical in the introduction of how history is taught poorly due to an over-reliance on textbooks. He's diplomatic in blaming the book, but that's only part of the problem. History classes are too often simply reading and regurgitating, but the source material is more often than not simply badly done. This book (and Zinn's A People's History) was the reason I became a teacher. There's a wealth of history yet unexplored and this book's central point is showing why textbooks shouldn't be held so tightly as definitive, which is an institutional problem. MWM —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.164.113.134 (talk) 04:13, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

Bias is a two-way street

I suggest that, whenever possible, one consider their own biases before responding to another and also consider their personal qualifications. I would like to point out some problems with some responses to my concerns. Generally, there is the glaring reality that the responses are, for the most part, silent on the issues I raised and have simply made assertions whose only support is an appeal to personal, unprofessional experience. Some baseless assertions have been made, for example, the notion that textbooks portray only one point-of-view. I suggest anyone who is interested examine some current textbooks at a research university and note the number of box insets concerning questions of historical interpretation, etc. Just because most students don't read the text thoroughly doesn't mean the text isn't addressing those issues. Indeed, the problem is that teachers and students often don't use a textbook properly to know what it actually says.

The problem with arguing that a book isn't flawed because its major theme is accurate even though its method of research is in error and it is guilty of over-reaching should be obvious. Of course history is incomplete as it is taught in primary and secondary schools. It is necessarily a survey course - or is it expected to cover the same amount of material as a freshman, sophomore, junion, or senior level university course? As to inaccuracy, that's the nature of the beast. History is debatable. As to Eurocentrism, textbooks concerning the United States would focus on the general American experience, much of which is defined by European immigrants and traditions. Balance is in the eye of the beholder. How long should the course dwell on the political traditions of the Iroquois as opposed to the Enlightenment principles so often quoted by the Framers of the Constitution? I would argue that the relevance of the Iroquois political traditions does not mach that of the Enlightenment. I would also argue Loewen shows his hand at over-reaching by pretending that schools should teach that Olmecs were plausibly African based on superficial similarities in physical features in Olmec art. There is a reason that it is not taught and it certainly isn't Eurocentrism. It is not taught because it is poor history - based on silly assumptions and wishful thinking. History is a discipline and Loewen should respect that.

If it took Loewen years to disect 12 textbooks then I need to get into his business. I'm very much involved in book adoptions for my district for advance placement, honors, and general course textbooks. When it comes time to adopt books, I review, easily, more than 2 dozen textbooks for consideration in the fields I teach in. As a student in the 1970s and 1980s and a teacher in the 1990s and today, I can safely say textbooks are designed differently and the approach to content has changed. I suspect the biases some may be seeing in the textbooks are either vastly exaggerated or arguably not biases. After all, no one is automatically immune to their own bias, not even Loewen.

Very few schools use the books Loewen used for his research or books as old as most of his samples. That's a fact. Loewen had access to many, many more recent textbooks and chose not to use them. That's a fact. I suggest anyone interested in the topic should do some research on Mr. Loewen and consider whether he may or may not have significant biases.

There are flaws in the teaching of history in schools but Loewen has done a poor job of portraying what those flaws are and he has engaged in sensationalism to boot - a particularly troubling thing for a social scientist to engage in. —Preceding unsigned comment added by HSHistTeacher (talk • contribs) 02:55, 11 September 2006

A good point. I read the book many years ago and no longer have a copy. However, I was able to use the Amazon Online Reader to look for information about the procedure and data Loewen used to select these books -- I had assumed that this article's use of the phrase "the twelve most popular history textbooks" meant that Loewen had made that claim in his text. However, he only mentions that he "chose the twelve as representing the range of textbooks available for American history courses" (pg. 16 of the edition used by Amazon). Without any evidence supporting the claim that these were "the twelve most popular history textbooks" in the mid-1990s, I've removed that phrase.

A neutral point of view is the goal for all Wikipedia articles, but it's sometimes a difficult state to reach. Still, there's nothing to do but keep trying and see how things work out. I'd encourage you to be WP:BOLD (but not reckless) in doing what you see fit to balance out this article, and we can come back to this talk page if any particular points prove contentious. -David Schaich ^Talk/_Cont 03:28, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

PS: Ha! You removed the line I quoted while I was quoting it. I nearly had a heart attack thinking I had based my comment on some bizarre misquote. -David Schaich ^Talk/_Cont 03:32, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll agree that the article needs a section for criticism. If you can find good, scholarly sources commenting on the book's accuracy, bias, thesis, methods, etc, feel free to summarize and include them. Personally, I don't think book reviews in non-academic sources will be particularly helpful here - especially from modern-day political commentators. Bjart 19:01, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

I think that the point of the book was to get people thinking about possible alternatives to the narrative provided in school (and in the 1990's, the history books my school used were nearly identical to the ones the author used). That said, I think it's critical to include a chapter by chapter breakdown with criticisms of the book to fully understand what the book was trying to convey. It makes the wikipedia article more accurate, and it actually illustrates the point of the book better.--77.237.15.104 (talk) 17:39, 4 October 2010 (UTC)

Removal

"Loewen suggests alternative material to include in history textbooks such as Pre-Columbian Africa-Americas contact theories that are not supported by mainstream historians."

If this is not cited then it should be removed. If this un-cited statement is included, then the article portrays Loewen's book as inaccurate. The impression that the book is inaccurate is clearly communicated to the reader through the above quote. One cannot read this quote and avoid thinking, "if mainstream historians do not support Loewen's views, then clearly Loewen must be using inaccurate information."

```` — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mwentz88 (talk • contribs) 19:55, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Inaccuracies

I must confess that I have not read any of the literature on Lies My Teacher Told Me, so I'm not sure what the sources for this would be, but the book seems to inaccurately depict history in ways that mimic the book's own criticisms of these high school text books. What I am namely refering to is the description of European history prior to and in the wake of Colombus's voyage to the Americas. Some of Loewen's claims are quite drastic, like the fact that the peoples, animals, and plants of the Americas were a cause of the Reformation (the text seems to imply a large one) or that potatoes and corn caused Russia's rise as a powerful European state (while ignoring the fact that it was only in the late 15th and early 16th centuries that Russian cities became independent of Mongol/Tatar overlordship). He also makes more minor mistakes, such as claiming that Quattrocento humanism challenged Catholic orthodoxy (I can only think of one work to which this would apply - Valla's De falso credita et ementita Constantini donatione declamatio which was written to give the Neapolitan monarch a claim of independence from Papal authority, but which was largely ignored until the Reformation). It might be more accurate to say that reformist clergy challenged orthodoxy (people like San Bernadino or Savonarola). He also makes claims like that Muslims maintained Greek learning while neglecting, as most Westerners do, the role the Byzantines played in maintaining Greek literature and insists on the importance of "Afro-Phoenicians" (by which he might mean Carthaginians?) to African American pride which seems as absurd as claiming that the achievements of the Moors in Spain should be counted among the things Polish-Americans are proud.

The worse part, is that most is guilty of what he claims text books are guilty of: his omits other causes of the Reformation or rise of Russia, which causes the reader to inflate the importance of the Americas (which should not even be considered as a significant cause); he misrepresents Quattrocento humanism so that it seems like a first step in modern, secularist/anti-clerical liberal thought (when it was largely a philological movement) hero-izing it; and is guilty of inflating the actions of certain ethnic groups' importance in ways that are ahistorical, when there are historical actions, events, or individuals who would perform the same function (mention Ibn Rushd and Ibn Sina instead of the generic "maintain ancient learning" when describing Muslim influence on European thought, for instance).

I'm not sure how prevalent this is through the entire work, given that my area of knowledge is European Late Medieval/Early Modern history (Trecento and Quattrocento humanism in particular), but I would not be surprised if this sort of shoddy history was present throughout the work. As I'm not an editor, I'm not sure how I should procede - could I create a section on historical inaccuracies in Lies My Teacher Told Me which includes claims he makes and then counter claims from other works or is that independent research? Should such a section only rely on the testimony of reviews and critiques of Loewen's book (which might be unfortunate, since I doubt many European historians of the Late Medieval/Early Modern Period, Russian historians, or Ancient Mediterranean historians reviewed a pop-sociology book on American textbooks. 98.206.161.87 (talk) 00:03, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

You may well be right; I read the first edition of the book and found some glaring examples of what you are claiming. I wrote the author, who pointed me to the newer edition, which, I must confess, I bought but have not read. Supposedly he had already fixed the errors I pointed out. None of this matters, though, because Wikipedia editors do not weigh in with our own opinions or original research. Everything in Wikipedia is supposed to be reliably sourced. So, the best way I can suggest to proceed would be to create a user account, familiarize yourself with the Five Pillars, and look for sources that critique Loewen which you can then use as references. Over the past several years, I've found very little out there on him or his books. I know a college professor of American history who knows him personally and promotes his ideas, but this only tells you what appeals to that professor. ;) Best wishes! Yopienso (talk) 00:23, 18 August 2012 (UTC)

I was only asking because most of what I've said is neither opinion nor original research (at least by the standard definition of research). I suppose Wikipedia's defintion of research is rather loose, since it does not even allow one to compare which of two sources is more reliable. Still, thanks for stopping me from editing this which probably would have caused me to enter an edit war defending my views. 98.206.161.87 (talk) 20:55, 8 September 2012 (UTC)