History

Chapter 1 summary

Chapter 1 begins with epigraphs from author James Baldwin, historian and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois, and Harvard professor Charles V. Willie about the tendency of Americans to idolize their ancestors. This chapter is about heroification, which is what author James W. Loewen calls the "degenerative process" that turns remarkable yet flawed people into history book heroes. Loewen provides two examples in this chapter: Woodrow Wilson and Helen Keller.

Helen Keller doesn't always find her way into history textbooks, but she's a staple of social studies classes around the country. As the result of an illness, Keller became deaf and blind at age 19 months. She is known for her friendship with her teacher, Anne Sullivan, and her remarkable ability to read and write. Keller's adulthood was spent as a radical socialist and an unwavering champion of civil rights. History books have all but erased that part of her life, preferring instead to cast her as a childlike model of American grit and perseverance.

President Woodrow Wilson is subjected to even greater heroification. History textbooks laud him for his support of progressive causes like the women's suffrage movement and his role in the formation of the League of Nations following World War I. They leave out the fact that he was a white supremacist who oversaw the segregation of the federal government for the first time since Reconstruction. They also fail to mention he instigated the invasions of several Latin American countries and inserted the United States into a Russian civil war. He didn't even support the suffragists' movement until he figured out doing so would help him politically. He did good things, yes, but he also did terrible things.

Loewen believes textbook authors leave out damning information like this "to make certain historical figures sympathetic to as many people as possible." They are presented as ideals to which one can aspire, not real people to whom one can relate. The reasons behind this practice are many: the desire to protect students from negative influences, pressure from committees who select textbooks for school use, and even the innate human desire to have uncomplicated icons. The result is that high school students know very little (and care even less) about the people portrayed in their history books.

Analysis

Chapter 1 sets up one of the main ideas Loewen comes back to again and again in Lies My Teacher Told Me—history books distort facts about historical figures in favor of heroification. There's a lot to unpack in this claim. First, it indicates that history textbooks are more biased than people think. Textbook authors determine not only who students should learn about but what they should know about them. The result is a very slanted look at the past. Loewen argues that history books are designed not to impart information but to make the United States and its leaders look good. One would expect to find such blatant nationalism in the texts of a totalitarian regime, like North Korea, but not in the democratic, free press–guaranteeing United States. Second, Loewen is saying that history books don't just leave out facts about the past—sometimes they change them completely. Students are learning things that simply aren't true.

There are plenty of history books and primary sources that tell the unfiltered stories behind the founding and existence of the United States. The problem is that authors, publishers, and those who select books for schools don't think the truth about the past is suitable for elementary, middle, and high school audiences. Some may think the past is too grim or gory for minors. Others might think certain events or decisions, such as Wilson's many foreign interventions, are an embarrassment to the nation's history. These people forget that children are naturally inquisitive about the motivations behind bad decisions and failures. Loewen asserts such topics are exactly what children need to learn in the classroom if such foibles are to be avoided in the future.

Champions of bland textbooks argue that heroification of historical figures gives students ideals to which they can aspire. Loewen disagrees. Like the three men he quotes in the chapter's epigraphs—all of whom are African American and all of whom probably never saw the history of their ancestors portrayed truthfully or heroically—Loewen thinks heroification does an enormous disservice to students by leaving them without any realistic role models. Everyone has flaws, even heads of state. Having the opportunity to see and analyze those flaws gives students a better opportunity to connect with the people they're reading about and to understand that their own flaws do not prevent them from achieving great things.