I’ve just read “Lies My Teacher Told Me” by James W. Loewen. For those who don’t know, this is a critique of some popular (American) history textbooks. Loewen pretty much trashes them all for being inaccurate, jingoistic and racially divisive.
It’s all very plausible, but now I’m wondering if there is any truth in it. What startles me is the fact that Loewen is not a historian, but a sociologist, and boasts awards not for history but apparently for Afrocentrism and opposing racism.
Can anyone shed any light on this? Is this a book respected by historians or is Lowen the historical equivalent of Eric von Daniken?
I’ve read it. It seems to me that he has some criticisms I agree with about the teaching of history in this country, but he’s also biased and inaccurate himself in the book.
Read it. Also read Lies Across America. LAA seems like it’s less biased tham LMTTM, although both books make accurate points about the state of Education in America.
Are there any parts in particular that you doubt? I don’t think that his Sociology background is a minus, since he looks as much at the impact of distorted history as the distortion itself.
> Loewen pretty much trashes them all for being inaccurate,
> jingoistic and racially divisive.
That’s not quite what he’s saying. He’s saying that they tend to be triumphalist (they show American history as if it were nothing but a series of easily won victories over the problems of American society), they tend to avoid controversial issues, and they tend to be written not by historians but by educators who merely copy from previous textbooks. Older American history books (say, ones published before the 1960’s) were often racist perhaps, but that’s not true of those published recently. With recent American history books it’s more a matter of limiting themselves to a narrow set of facts than of distorting those facts. Why don’t you list some specific points from Loewen’s book and we can discuss the accuracy of what he says and what most American history books say.
Well, von Daniken is synonymous with “load of old bollocks”. Although I have read several of his books and found them very entertaining. An edition of “Chariots of the Gods” with footnotes by James Randi would certainly be worth a look if it existed.
I have to admit I view sociology as bordering on pseudoscience. But that’s not the reason for my suspicion, and I don’t dispute his sociological conclusions. It’s simply that there is a lot of historical information presented by someone who is not a historian, so it’s hard to be certain of its accuracy.
It’s not that I doubt anything in particular, I am British after all and these are not lies my teacher told me.
I apologise for the inadequacy of my one-line synopsis.
It’s not that he considers the textbooks racist as such, but racially divisive in their Eurocentricity and ignoring the undeniably racist attitudes of certain “heroes”.
I should make it clear that my knowledge of American history is somewhat limited - this is the most in depth book that I have read on the subject. It’s a discussion that I’d love to read but my participation isn’t likely to be too impressive.
One of the most startling parts for me was the behaviour of Columbus. Now we all know that Columbus probably wasn’t even the first European to discover America, and that he wasn’t attempting to prove that the world was round. More controversially, Loewen states the following :
There’s more of this kind of thing, but that’s enough typing for now.
What you think of “Lies” is likely t odepend on where you grew up and where you went to school. In my experience (going to Catholic schools in the 1960s and 1970s), the gist of “Lies” is ridiculously wrong. The history texts I read (which seemed to be pretty standard for schoolkids in the state of New York at the time) were definitely slanted waaaay Left. And, far from being “racist” or celebratory of American achievement, they went out of their way to denigrate America and to seek out obscure, “unjustly forgotten” women and racial minorities to laud.
The only thing that latter-day leftists would have found to object to in MY history books would have been
The failure to present enough positive gay role models.
The cheesey, dated language (“that George Washington Carver certainly was a credit to his race”).
I don’t think it’s very useful to discuss Loewen’s book in terms of whether American History books are any good in general. Some of them are very good, but some are terrible. Any discussion like that would end up as a debate with some people going, “Those textbooks are controlled by a bunch of hardcore conservatives,” and other people going, “No, they’re controlled by a bunch of knee-jerk liberals.” That’s going to get boring really quickly. It would be more interesting to discuss whether the particular points made by Loewen are correct. You’ve given us a bunch of particular statements made by Loewen in the book, and I think it would be more interesting to figure out whether these statements are correct. This thread should really be in GQ, not here in CS.
Jeez, if Loewe bothers you, don’t even think about reading Howard Zinn’s hitory of America. Zinn is the one who originally dredged up Columbus’ less honorable actions and wrote about them without trying to excuse them.
I liked Lowen’s books, especiall Lies Across America, which had an original point – that you can’t rely on the objectivity of historical markers. “Lies My Teacher Told Me” covered ground that others had been over, notably Richard Shenkman, who seems to get even less respect than Loewen.
For what it’s worth, I see both of Loewen’s books on sale at places like Sturbridge Village and at the Smthsonian in Washington – certainly the booksellers at America’s historic places have given the books their blessings.
In another thread long ago, someone brought up Lies Across America in support of an argument, so I strolled down to the library and checked it out.
The book itself is filled, if not with lies, then with misleading half-truths.
Worse, when I checked some of Loewen’s footnotes, I found several of them to be either: a) fabricated or b) a misrepresentation of what the source material said.
I would read Loewen with extreme caution. The man has an axe to grind, and he doesn’t seem to be above omitting inconvenient facts, relying on dubious source material, or even engaging in outright fabrication to make a point. Loewen’s stated goal is noble; it’s his methods I question. You don’t fight lies with lies. Or with misleading half-truths.
Do what I did. If you have questions about what Loewen is saying, check his footnotes. It takes a little work at the library, but it’s an enlightening experience.
I haven’t read Loewen and, as a fellow Brit, am unlikely to, so I don’t feel I’ve any particular axe to grind here. But on the basis of what I’ve read by and about Columbus none of the quoted statements strike me as particularly dubious.
Indians were certainly taken back in 1493 and some of them died en route, though I’m not entirely sure how many. The nearest I can find is this passage:
“All this conversation was conducted through two Indian interpreters, the only survivors of the seven who had been taken to Castile on the previous voyage. Five of them died on the way back and these two almost did so.”
from Chanca’s letter to Seville about the second voyage. (Unless otherwise stated, I’m quoting from J.M. Cohen’s translations in his compliation The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus, Penguin Classics, 1969. This passage is on p151.) It’s slightly unclear to me whether this 7 is a reference to Indians in general, or some subset of interpreters. Loewen may have exagerated the number.
The details of the inventory for the second voyage are correct. Attack dogs were taken; see Cohen’s footnote on p189. There’s a description of how they were used (but not by Columbus) in Las Casas A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indes (Penguin Classics, 1992, p16-17).
Pretty much standard operating procedure for the period. (I happen to be reading Bernal Diaz’s The Conquest of New Spain at the moment and the way Cortes assigns native women to his lieutenants is a recurring feature.) The last sentence is possibly a reference to:
“[Columbus] took one of their chieftains too and had one of his ears cut off in the centre of his village because of his treatment of three Christians on their way from Isabela to Santo Tomas”
in the biography by his son (Cohen, p167), referring to an incident on Haiti in April 1494. The chieftain had stolen their clothing.
Don’t have any numbers, but, yes, in an attempt to justify the project economically Columbus did ship slaves back to Spain, with many dying en route. Those that survived were often immediately freed because Ferdinand and Isabella had moral qualms about slavery. See Felipe Fernandez-Armesto’s Columbus (Oxford, 1991), especially p111.
Fernandez-Armesto’s version of the quote (p138) is “And although at present they die on shipment, this will not always be the case, for the Negroes and Canary Islanders reacted in the same way at first.” His footnote cites the original from Varela’s Cristobal Colon: Textos y documentos completos, the most standard edition of Columbus’ writings.
Can’t confirm the first statement, though it wouldn’t surprise me. Cohen’s translation of the passage (p190) is:
“Hispaniola was reduced to such peace and obedience that all promised to pay tribute to the Catholic sovereigns every three months. That is to say: in the province of Cibao, where the goldfields lay, every person over the age of fourteen would pay a large bell-full of gold dust, and everywhere else twenty-five pounds of cotton. And in order that the Spaniards should know what persons owed tribute, orders were given for the manufacture of discs of brass or copper, to be given to each every time he made payment, and to worn around the neck. Consequently if any man was found without a disc, it would be known that he had not paid and he would be punished.”
No idea what the punishment would be, but cutting off a hand doesn’t sound unlikely.
Again, I don’t have a specific reference for rapes, but it doesn’t seem implausible.
The friend is Juana de la Torre, governess of Don Juan of Castile. Cohen’s version (p271) is:
“The cost of a woman is 100 castellanos, the same as that of a farm. The trade is very common and there are now many merchants who go about looking for girls; some of nine or ten are now on sale, but whatever their age they command a good price.”
However, the general tone of the letter is one of bitter recrimination at the state of the colonies - this is the point at which he’s being shipped back to Spain in chains - and this can’t really be read as an endorsement of the situation. I suppose it depends on whether you read Loewen’s use of the quote as a simple example or a dig at Columbus.
So that’s one possible exaggeration and one arguable bit of misrepresentation. Otherwise, the quotations seem acceptable and there’s nothing obviously factually wrong. It’s difficult to know without reading the passages quoted in context, but one might feel that Loewen’s Columbus is being painted unflattering darkly. But then the real Columbus doesn’t come across as a nice guy.
Does Loewen foot/endnote his claims ? Of course, even von Danikan has been known to parade them by way of pretence, but citing specific sources does make it so much easier to check these things. In this instance, interest alone was enough for me (as I say, I’m currently reading Diaz) and I could guess where I might find the quotes, but specific pointers would normally be invaluable.
If your interest in Columbus is piqued, then any of the books I mention above would be a good next step.
On a personal note, my first argument with a Spanish girlfriend was over whether everybody in Columbus’ time thought the Earth was flat. Despite being a graduate student at the time, her argument basically was that that’s what she’d been taught at school. To be fair, she subsequently caught me out for claiming that the Normans were Vikings on the same basis. (Obligatory subsequently read reference: The Normans and Their Myth by R.H.C. Davis, Thames and Hudson, 1976.)
I haven’t read Loewen and, as a fellow Brit, am unlikely to, so I don’t feel I’ve any particular axe to grind here. But on the basis of what I’ve read by and about Columbus none of the quoted statements strike me as particularly dubious.
Indians were certainly taken back in 1493 and some of them died en route, though I’m not entirely sure how many. The nearest I can find is this passage:
“All this conversation was conducted through two Indian interpreters, the only survivors of the seven who had been taken to Castile on the previous voyage. Five of them died on the way back and these two almost did so.”
from Chanca’s letter to Seville about the second voyage. (Unless otherwise stated, I’m quoting from J.M. Cohen’s translations in his compliation The Four Voyages of Christopher Columbus, Penguin Classics, 1969. This passage is on p151.) It’s slightly unclear to me whether this 7 is a reference to Indians in general, or some subset of interpreters. Loewen may have exagerated the number.
The details of the inventory for the second voyage are correct. Attack dogs were taken; see Cohen’s footnote on p189. There’s a description of how they were used (but not by Columbus) in Las Casas A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indes (Penguin Classics, 1992, p16-17).
Pretty much standard operating procedure for the period. (I happen to be reading Bernal Diaz’s The Conquest of New Spain at the moment and the way Cortes assigns native women to his lieutenants is a recurring feature.) The last sentence is possibly a reference to:
“[Columbus] took one of their chieftains too and had one of his ears cut off in the centre of his village because of his treatment of three Christians on their way from Isabela to Santo Tomas”
in the biography by his son (Cohen, p167), referring to an incident on Haiti in April 1494. The chieftain had stolen their clothing.
Don’t have any numbers, but, yes, in an attempt to justify the project economically Columbus did ship slaves back to Spain, with many dying en route. Those that survived were often immediately freed because Ferdinand and Isabella had moral qualms about slavery. See Felipe Fernandez-Armesto’s Columbus (Oxford, 1991), especially p111.
Fernandez-Armesto’s version of the quote (p138) is “And although at present they die on shipment, this will not always be the case, for the Negroes and Canary Islanders reacted in the same way at first.” His footnote cites the original from Varela’s Cristobal Colon: Textos y documentos completos, the most standard edition of Columbus’ writings.
Can’t confirm the first statement, though it wouldn’t surprise me. Cohen’s translation of the passage (p190) is:
“Hispaniola was reduced to such peace and obedience that all promised to pay tribute to the Catholic sovereigns every three months. That is to say: in the province of Cibao, where the goldfields lay, every person over the age of fourteen would pay a large bell-full of gold dust, and everywhere else twenty-five pounds of cotton. And in order that the Spaniards should know what persons owed tribute, orders were given for the manufacture of discs of brass or copper, to be given to each every time he made payment, and to worn around the neck. Consequently if any man was found without a disc, it would be known that he had not paid and he would be punished.”
No idea what the punishment would be, but cutting off a hand doesn’t sound unlikely.
Again, I don’t have a specific reference for rapes, but it doesn’t seem implausible.
The friend is Juana de la Torre, governess of Don Juan of Castile. Cohen’s version (p271) is:
"The cost of a woman is 100 castellanos, the same as that of a farm. The trade is very common and there are now many merchants who go about looking for girls; some of nine or ten are now on sale, but whatever their age they command a good pri
—On a personal note, my first argument with a Spanish girlfriend was over whether everybody in Columbus’ time thought the Earth was flat.—
I still can’t believe that kids are taught that Columbus boldly sailed off into what “everybody thought” was the edge of the flat world. Who thought this? The kids are never told. The really amusing thing about the story is not even that nobody at that time was worried that the world was flat, but that Colombus’s detractors were right and Colombus was wrong: the world really WAS much bigger than Colombus thought it was.
It also turns out that we know exactly where this myth came from: Washington Irving. He popularized the idea in something that was billed as a biography of Colombus.
For people who enjoy debunking American history in a historical, rather than accusedly partisan, way try Richard Shenkman’s “Legends, Lies, & Cherised Myths of American History.” Shenkman is a journalist, but he’s very reliable and respected (citing respected historians not in footnotes, but in the texts), and he’s not out with an axe to grind: he’s mostly just interested in how misconceptions come to be, and what this means for how history should be taught.
As for Colombus and his murderous ways… all sadly true. What’s changed is not that people have dug up new evidence of what he did, but rather that up until recently, no one cared to think ill of him for it (it certainly wasn’t particularly exceptional compared to what many other Europeans did). Samuel Morrison, for instance, doesn’t deny it: he just doesn’t think it should detract from Colombus’ greatness. That, of course, is a moral issue, not a historical one (the related historical issue is how and why the moral issue has changed in some people’s minds)
No, I was really asking for opinions of Loewen’s integrity, to be able to judge whether I can take his version of history seriously.
I did that because you asked me to. If subsequent posters hadn’t confirmed the accuracy of much of Loewen’s statements I would have made another thread in GQ about it. Later I may pick out something else from the book and do just that. But I think the thread is correctly placed, because we are discussing Loewen’s book rather than Columbus.
bonzer, thanks for all that information, a very impressive post. Are you a history teacher yourself?
Loewen puts footnotes all over the place - 95 in the Columbus chapter alone. None of the references are ones that you quote, although they clearly share material. These are the ones that apparently relate to the quotes that I posted:
Kirkpartick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise
Eric Williams, Documents of West Indian History (quoted letters)
Ferdinand Columbus, The Life of the Admiral Christopher Columbus
Maria Norlander-Martinez, “Christopher Columbus: The Man, the Myth, and the Slave Trade” Adventures of the Incredible Librarian, April 1990
Elsewhere he does refer to a different las Casas work, History of the Indies.
The last quote, as you point out, could be seen as slightly out of context. In the book no indication is given that Columbus may be disapproving in his statement. Given the activities that he did approve of, the reader will naturally take it to mean the worst.
Can you point out some of the main inaccuracies in the book? Also, in what way do you consider him biased? If his facts are generally correct, isn’t his only bias to be in favour of teaching history properly?
Personally, when I read a history book, I don’t want to see historic figures judged according to current morality. I just want to know the facts. Loewen isn’t judging Columbus, he’s just pointing out that there was another side to him that the textbooks ignore. There’s nothing wrong with teaching the historical significance of Columbus, but it is certainly inappropriate to make him out to be a hero.
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve read his books. I know, for example, in his “Lies Across America”, he’s talking about the town of, I believe, Forrest, Mississippi, which he correctly points out was named after Nathan Bedford Forrest, Confederate General and founder of the Ku Klux Klan. He argues that the town was named after Forrest as a symbol of Mississippi’s racism…that they named it that to celebrate his racism. What he doesn’t mention, though, IIRC, is that the town was founded by Forrest, and that it was common practice at the time to name towns after their founders.
Something to remember, when talking about teaching history is that there are always more facts that can be mentioned than there is time to mention, and which facts you mention determine your bias. I don’t think it’s possible to teach history without bias.
—Personally, when I read a history book, I don’t want to see historic figures judged according to current morality.—
Sure, but the reality is: these figures are made historic precisely because they were, rightly or wrongly, judged to be so by someone at some point, often for moral reasons, and often on very poor or one-sided perspectives. When they are presented in textbooks, these figures are whitewashed precisely because they ARE being judged according to current morality: judged positively by those textbooks.
I think an important point that Loewen makes is his criticism of the super-patriotic tone of history texts. By making our forefathers into saints, we also make them bland and boring to kids. History is almost always ranked as the least favorite subject amongst students, because it’s so boring: a parade of saints and dates. Text writer’s desire to instill patriotism in children often has the opposit effect: by making our heroes seem flawless, we make them irrelevant. When kids go off to college, and discover that they spent twelve years memorizing biased and slanted facts, they can feel angry and betrayed. Patriotism doesn’t mean we must be blameless; we can still celebrate our nation while admitting its past flaws. It’s been said that those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it. How can we ever learn from our mistakes unless we’re willing to admit them?
It doesn’t have to be this way. History is fascinating. We can learn much about the present from the study of the past. Perhaps we could make history more interesting to children by showing them that times may change, but people never do, and that despite their flaws, our leaders accomplished many great things. Discussing their flaws can make our forefathers seem more human and understandable, rather than the cold images of paragons of virture who never err.: “They [text book authors] fear history—fear that it isn’t so wonderful, and that if children were to learn what has really gone on, they would lose all respect for society,” says Loewen, and perhaps he’s right. A guideline from the National Assessment for Educational Progress says “exercises that show national heroes in an uncomplimentary fashion though factually accurate are offensive.”
One of my favorite quotes from the book is this:“Chemistry books are called * Chemistry * or* Principles of Chemistry,* not *Rise of the Molecule.” * I remember as kids, we snickered a bit over the grandiose names of the text books. Loewen cites: *Rise of the American Nation, The American Adventure, Challenge of Freedom, Triumph of the American Nation, Land of Promise, The Great Republic, * etc. They may sound “romantic” and sweeping to adults, but a lot of kids think they sound “dumb.”
Loewen is correct when he points out that the way history is taught robs it of its interest. Names, dates, and other trivia take priority over the reasons behind an event. As he says (and I may be paraphrasing a bit) “Is it more important for a child to know the date WWII started, or the reasons why it happened in the first place?”
Loewen’s books is, in my opinion, an excellent analysis of the particular textbooks that he chooses. It is also, in many ways, a good history of the United States in its own right, giving the reader a good sense of the goings-on in many key periods of American history.
The only problem with it, and one that some reviewers of the book acknowledged, was that it was out-of-date when it hit the shelves. Released in 1995, Loewen’s book surveys 12 American history textbooks, the most recent of which was published in 1991, the majority of which are from the early to mid-1980s, and a couple of which are from the mid-1970s.
The last couple of decades has been one of constant, rapid change in the writing of American history textbooks, and many of the problems that Loewen attributes to his selected texts were in the process of being rectified even as he wrote. Now, i am not making the assertion that the current crop of textbooks are perfect - far from it - but the issues that Loewen identified as problematic have been, and are being addressed by textbook writers with each new edition that hits the shelves.
My observations are not intended to disparage Loewen or his book in any way. I think it is an excellent piece of work, and i am sympathetic to the fact that writing a book takes quite a long time and it is almost impossible to incorporate the very latest developments.