History is the lie commonly agreed upon. (Voltaire)
History comprehends experiences that have transpired previously. It is the aggregate of past events, which gives insight for the future. Majority of historical events are factual; however, all that exists is through perception.
Many Americans have lost touch with their history, and in Lies My Teacher Told Me Professor Loewen explains why. He believes that there is a combination of blind patriotism, mindless optimism, and misinformation that is being taught in high school history courses. After, reading a few chapters of his book I was very impressed by his research and detailed accounts.
Many high school students strongly dislike history. They presume history to be boring, predictable, and repetitive. “History is the past, so why should I have to learn about the past, why not the future?” This was a question that I asked my history teacher my senior year of high school. I couldn’t understand why he wanted us to learn about things that happened a hundred years prior. How ironic that I chose history as my major in college. Anyhow, I remember the large text books that were always covered with deceased people that were important supposedly. But important to who? Loewen pointed out that some textbook leave out intricate details that ultimately make the main “white” character seem like a hero. He also explained that minority students perform slightly worse that white students.
Americans show a great interest in history outside of the classroom, many people enjoy films that recreate the past; they attend museums, and read novels. Nonetheless, they are uninterested in a subject that allows them to understand the world they live in. Students complain that history texts are extremely huge some books pages number up to the thousands. The textbooks publishers attempt to include every single detail even if the details seem meaningless, which ultimately makes books longer. Teachers usually assign students chapters to read, key terms to define, and skill building exercises that usually concludes each chapter. These assignments are awfully time consuming. Overall, students exit history courses without having developed the ability to think coherently about social life.
Loewen, James W. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.
I completely agree with you, unfortunately a lot of our education as Americans focuses too much on political correctness or cover-ups rather than telling the cold hard truth. Imagine if the history books were not biased! I wonder what American society would look like. I'm not sure I agree with Voltaire, and maybe you'll talk about this in your paper, but history itself is not a lie. History is what happened, the lie starts when people begin to retell what happened. Everyone perceives the world differently, so the agreed upon perceptions are what form the minds of those who did not live through the historical events being discussed. There's a lot of trust that goes into reading about history; do we trust the books too much? What can we do to be sure what we are reading is the truth? Those are some tough questions that I'm not sure really have answer!
ReplyDeleteI really like your topic and I want to hear more about it, so good luck with your research!
Thank you, your comment has helped me raise many
ReplyDeletemore questions about my topic:)
Khalila,
ReplyDeleteAs I read your blog, I agree with you and your ways of defining history. It does comprehend experiences from the past giving insights for the future. You already mentioned how kids think history is boring, I agree to that because they think it was the past and that they shouldn't have to be reminded of anything which happened in the past. When I attended high school, I heard students repeat “History is boring”, yes, they say it because they don't know it can be an interesting subject. As a student, I didn't really like history. After my family moved to America, I realized that I should learn how to like history because of mine and my family's life experience during the war. Because I have lived through a war myself, I showed more interest in “History” books and mostly on people's autobiographies. One book I read during middle school was A girl of Kosovo by Alice Mead, and thought it was a really interesting book because the girl in the book named Zana, went through the same situation as me. I really enjoyed reading it because of the similarities we had. If everyone really took their time to learn about history and different peoples' experiences, that's when they will learn how important history is.
Thank you Blerina ;)
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