Lies My Teacher Told Me is a nonfiction history book consisting of the author's attempt to debunk various myths, untruths, and omissions in American history as taught to high school students through US history textbooks. The author analyzes 12 textbooks, mostly traditional texts but also including two "discourse" style books, around specific events in US History.
Throughout Lies, Loewen illustrates how Anglo centric the textbooks are in their selection and presentation of material, how they tend to present one-sided stories in order to preserve the "heroification" of certain historical figures (like George Washington, Christopher Columbus, Woodrow Wilson, and Helen Keller). For example, most of the textbooks paint a glowing picture of Columbus and how he "found" the "New World" (despite the land's previous occupation by indigenous people, the facts that many other explorers may have been in North America previously, and that Columbus enslaved and murdered thousands of indigenous people).
Loewen is meticulous with citations as to which textbooks give fair treatments of a given historical event and which do not, using quotes to support his argument.
Another point he makes is that the textbooks have a tendency to simplify history, so that if there is a historical occurrence that is under debate--for example, whether or not the Pilgrims intentionally landed at Plymouth although their original destination was supposed to be Jamestown, Virginia, including the theory that they might have in fact hijacked the ship from the non-Pilgrim majority--the textbooks have a tendency to pick one version of the story and stick with it, distilling history down into "factoids" for students to memorize, instead of presenting multiple sides of the story and allowing students to engage in intellectual debate.
Loewen also points out that many of the textbook authors base their writing on previous textbooks instead of original sources, which causes the perpetuation of what are, in some cases, erroneous or unfounded accounts. An example is the story of Queen Isabella selling her jewels to fund Columbus' first mission. According to Loewen there are no historical sources to confirm this fable, yet many textbooks include it.
Another lesson I pulled out of the reading is the tendency of textbooks to minimize or completely ignore the existence of class differences in the United States. Instead, they paint a middle class America of which we are all to be proud, while at the same time leaving out the upper and lower classes. He talks about the textbook adoption process, and how authors try to avoid anything even vaguely controversial so that they appeal to the largest audience possible and can get their books adopted by school districts, particularly by Texas, which is a major cash cow but has historically had conservative review boards.
Anyway, it took me a long time to finish Lies My Teacher Told Me, but it was completely worth it. It falls nicely into a theme I find I have been researching through my reading--which has to do with poverty, labor, and class. Other books along this theme that I have read recently include Kozol's analysis of class and race inequities in education and the book I am currently reading, Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich.
Update 8.20.09: I recently found this link that I like to a compilation of quotes from Lies My Teacher Told Me. Seems to be from a professor by the name of Colby Glass.
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