My Teacher Told Me
Throughout our educational lives, we have been told countless stories of how this nation came to be. Countless hours in a classroom for 12 years, just to be told half of the story, sometimes a bunch of lies or overly edited facts. In “Lies My Teacher Told Me” Loewen utilizes many different sources such as journals, images, newspaper clippings and oral accounts of events that took place through out history. With these sources Loewen proves that text books give false information or omit things all together to keep from offending people of a certain culture race or religion. Loewen also proves that the text books alter the events to create a more likeable story thus saving the characters already glorified reputation. The way he does this is by
…show more content…
He also uses Red White, and Black, a primary source to show how distorted the text book point of view is.
“Our history textbooks still obliterate the interracial, multicultural nature of frontier life. Boorstin and Kelley tell us, “A focus of community life was the fort builty by John Sutter” but they never mention that the community largely American Indians. American History devotes almost a page to Sutter’s Fort without ever hinting that Native Americans were anything but enemies.”
Gary Nash, the author of Red White, and Black tells us that “ inter culturation took place from the start in Virgina, facilitiated by the fact that some Indians lived among the English as day laborers, while a number of settlers fled to Indian Villages rather than endure the rigors of life among autocratic English.”
So right there alone, Loewen takes what the text book states, and compares it with a primary source to show exactly biased text books are to a certain culture. The truth of the matter is, the two cultures lived together. In fact, the English basically fled to live with the Natives. Textbooks portray certain cultures as hell to coexist with, in this case, it is the Natives. According to other sources, it wasn’t as bad as the text books
He also uses Red White, and Black, a primary source to show how distorted the text book point of view is.
“Our history textbooks still obliterate the interracial, multicultural nature of frontier life. Boorstin and Kelley tell us, “A focus of community life was the fort builty by John Sutter” but they never mention that the community largely American Indians. American History devotes almost a page to Sutter’s Fort without ever hinting that Native Americans were anything but enemies.”
Gary Nash, the author of Red White, and Black tells us that “ inter culturation took place from the start in Virgina, facilitiated by the fact that some Indians lived among the English as day laborers, while a number of settlers fled to Indian Villages rather than endure the rigors of life among autocratic English.”
So right there alone, Loewen takes what the text book states, and compares it with a primary source to show exactly biased text books are to a certain culture. The truth of the matter is, the two cultures lived together. In fact, the English basically fled to live with the Natives. Textbooks portray certain cultures as hell to coexist with, in this case, it is the Natives. According to other sources, it wasn’t as bad as the text books