Lies My Teacher Told Me Summary

Part I: After reading chapters 2 and 3 in Lies My Teacher Told Me by James Loewen, which gave a new view on Christopher Columbus and the first thanksgiving. One concept that Loewen wrote about and Dr. J lectured about was that Christopher Columbus wasn't actually the first one to “discover” the “New World”. In fact many people had been living there for sometime before he had arrived. They gave Columbus a sense of herofication which is "a degenerative process (much like calcification) that makes people over into heroes. Through this process, our educational media turn flesh-and-blood individuals into pious, perfect creatures without conflicts, pain, credibility, or human interest” (Loewen 11). The history books didn't exactly tell the truth nor lie, they just filled in with the wrong information and unverifiable information. Loewen also wrote about how “the textbooks first mistake is to underplay previous explorers. People from other continents had reached the Americas many times before 1942”
All of these so called lies are the topics our textbooks are teaching us in school. What I found to be most helpful was that Loewen gave reasons and explained why we were taught the things we were but, I still don't feel that it was right. I think that these two events in history were two very important dates and should be told correctly. This new information has changed my thoughts about the school textbooks and what am I really being taught. I do now have a new perspective on a few events that happened in history after reading these chapters. I even brought the book to my dad and talked to him about what I was reading because I had never questioned it before and wanted to hear his thoughts on it. He was even surprised about some of the things that Loewen talked about in his