Lies My Teacher Told Me

I finally got a hold of a book I've wanted to read for years - Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen. It's been an eyeopener and a pleasure to read. I'm on Chapter 4...which is sort of a lot like Chapter 3 (they both deal with early American Indian relations) and I'm loving it. Why? Well, there's lots of very interesting facts like how "Wall Street" in NYC really got its name. (The Dutch paid the wrong tribe of Indians for Manhattan. So, the tribe that really owned Manhattan started fighting the Dutch. The Dutch built a wall to defend themselves against that tribe.) And Columbus...what a jerk!

I find it interesting, too, how American History textbooks try to make the youth of America more patriotic by downplaying or downright omitting the dark truth about our nation's past. We want to pretend like people didn't live here, that America was virgin territory, but that's not how it was. And we don't want to think about how Europeans enslaved Indians, spread diseases that wiped out a majority of Indians, and played Indians against other tribes! Let's face it---Europeans during 1500-1800....not so nice. I think it is very important for Americans to know the truth about their country's history so they don't wonder why most of the world envies yet despises America. And why some areas of the world are in such turmoil (OMG, can you believe it's because America intervened in their politics?).

This is such a good book that I might buy it, just to have it in my future classroom! Can you imagine a kid picking up a REAL non-fiction book?!