My rating for this book - 9/10.
So, I finally finished reading Lies My Teacher Told Me last weekend. It's such an eye-opening book about history textbooks and social studies education in general that I don't really know where to begin. I suppose I'll say that my favorite parts of the book are when the Loewen discusses how textbooks talk about American history as a series of events that were "inevitable" because America always makes "progress." But that progress is almost grotesque when you think about all the people American screwed to become a superpower. Textbooks don't address the presidential assassinations we initiated in other countries to set up governments favorable to ours. No, high school history textbooks sugarcoat everything as simply FATE. Yes, we were fated to take over the land now known as the United States from the millions of people who lived here long before Christopher Columbus. It's really a shame that we teach children that this was inevitable, that Indians were just inferior and we, European decedents, were DESTINED to take over.
So, if the book was so good, why do I only give it a 9/10. Well....the first 11 chapters were very well-written, interesting, but the last 2 chapters were a bit of a drag. They just kept repeating the same lessons learned in the other 11 chapters. I'm assuming these chapters were added into the 2007 edition and don't appear in the original 1995 edition of the book. Nonetheless, 9/10 is a great score and I highly recommend reading this book if you ever get a chance.
Next book on my queue - Neil Gaiman's "American Gods."
