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Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

#164: Feb. - April 2019 (Non-Fiction)
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Chris OConnor

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Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong - by James W. Loewen

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Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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From the intro, talking about the flaws of high school history textbooks
"We have not avoided controversial issues," announces one set of textbook authors; "instead, we have tried to offer reasoned judgments" on them -- thus removing the controversy! Because textbooks employ such a godlike tone, it never occurs to most students students to question them
Wow, that's messed up!

He talks about how students find history to be an extremely boring and endless series of facts. Certainly rings true for what I can remember from my experience. Took me a long time until I realized history can be interesting.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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I've included a number of discussion questions, please respond to the ones that you really like (i.e. don't feel like you have to answer all of them. :)

Introduction
The introduction to the book gives us a look into the motivations the author had hen wrote this book. He makes a number of claims, a number of which I think warrants some examination or discussion:

1. History is unique amongst high school subjects as its generally disliked and uninformative (and as a result students must unlearn in college what they learned in high school.)

2. The way history is taught is inferior: disconnected from the present, overly optimistic, moral signalling on patriotism, taught as memorisation.

3. History textbooks are terrible.

Discussion Questions for the Introduction:

1. Do you agree with any of Loewen's claims in the introduction? Did you have experiences in high school (or college) that run counter to his claims?

2. Loewen's book was originally published in 1995, and updated every few years until now. Do you feel his criticisms of history instruction have been eroded or should have changed, i.e. do you feel he may be ignoring advances in his 2018 revision because he's attached to his conclusions originally published in 1995?

3. What was your relationship with history (as a course subject) when you started reading this book? Did you like history in school? Do you study it on your own for fun?


Chapter 1

Chapter 1 is dominated by the discussion of two contemporary historical figures: Helen Keller and Woodrow Wilson, and goes on to illustrate some of the problems with how history is presented in secondary education in the US.

Discussion Questions

1. Loewen cites Helen Keller as an example of a historical figure who is reduced to unidimensionality and then treated as an ideal, motivated in large part by her socialist leanings as an adult. Do you know of any other historical figures (especially women) who have been conveniently reduced in this fashion? Why do you think they have been given the reductionist treatment both specifically as a person, but generally as a figure?

2. Loewen discusses the reasons history is narrowed in history textbooks and courses, and he judges the motivations to be all around bad. As a society and culture, what do we stand to lose from treating history this way? Now, a little juicier: as a society and culture, what do we stand to gain from treating history this way?

3. Woodrow Wilson is clearly portrayed as a spheres-of-influence type diplomat in this chapter. Do you agree? Do you find it hard to reconcile all the good things you heard about him before reading Chapter 1 with all the bad things you read about him in that chapter (I mean here having to treat a historical figure as a human being rather than an ideal or a simple "good" or "bad").

4. Loewen ascribes a lot of the racial climate both culturally and politically to Woodrow Wilson's position on non-Whites, citing a number of bills passed and policies enacted. Do you feel that claim is warranted? Does the president signal moral cues that allow people to act out their racism both then and now? The president of the US can be thought of as the head of both state and government. In countries where the head of state isn't the head of government (e.g. the UK where the queen is the head of state, and the PM, Teresa May, is the head of government). Do you feel distilling the two roles into a single office makes the transition from cultural sentiment to law more efficient? And if more or less efficient, is this desirable?

5. The Espionage and Sedition Acts were both passed into law during the First Red Scare in the US (1917-1921), and Loewen cites Wilson's use of his new Postmaster General to suppress mail for its ideological content. The suppression itself sound outrageous, but we also live in a time where email in the US can be easily accessed by the government for "surveillance". Does privacy trump security here? Do you feel like the suppression of mail on the internet is a major problem (if it were to happen)?

6. I have often heard of something called "the Disney version" meaning it has been whitewashed or sanitised for general consumption. However, a lot of classic Disney stories have come recurrent, (and not altogether ideal) situations: parents being dead/killed/absent, someone/thing evil trying to kill the main character, etc.). Do you feel saying "the Disney version" is warranted?
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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Dexter wrote:From the intro, talking about the flaws of high school history textbooks
"We have not avoided controversial issues," announces one set of textbook authors; "instead, we have tried to offer reasoned judgments" on them -- thus removing the controversy! Because textbooks employ such a godlike tone, it never occurs to most students students to question them
Wow, that's messed up!

He talks about how students find history to be an extremely boring and endless series of facts. Certainly rings true for what I can remember from my experience. Took me a long time until I realized history can be interesting.
Do you find the lack of discourse in history classes to be a problem of just the textbooks, or a more generalised problem (e.g. limite classroom time, uninformed teachers, etc)?

I find myself resistant to the idea of "reasoned judgements" on most things, but I admit there are times when I would rather read the synopsis than the whole bloody thing (e.g. when the description of bills on the ballot comes up, I rarely read the whole text as it's fairly unwieldy). I suppose then, the more important it is, the less likely I am to entertain "reasoned judgements" pronounced by someone else. :hmm:
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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capricorn152244 wrote:
Do you find the lack of discourse in history classes to be a problem of just the textbooks, or a more generalised problem (e.g. limite classroom time, uninformed teachers, etc)?

I find myself resistant to the idea of "reasoned judgements" on most things, but I admit there are times when I would rather read the synopsis than the whole bloody thing (e.g. when the description of bills on the ballot comes up, I rarely read the whole text as it's fairly unwieldy). I suppose then, the more important it is, the less likely I am to entertain "reasoned judgements" pronounced by someone else. :hmm:
Just starting the book, I assume he goes into more details about textbooks. One problem is the textbook adoption process, as he says publishers have to cater to a wide market so they throw in everything, avoid controversy, and then teachers are pressured (if they even have a choice) of going with a "standard" book. But there is also the problem of large class sizes, making discussion more difficult, and an incentive for more objectivity in grading. And probably lack of knowledge among teachers too.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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Wow, way to bust it out, Capricorn! :up:

Regarding the introduction, I recall engaging in the following behavior in high school, thinking history had zero practical relevance.
At year’s end, no student can remember 840 main ideas, not to mention 890 terms and countless other factoids. So students and teachers fall back on one main idea: to memorize the terms for the test on that chapter, then forget them to clear the synapses for the next chapter.
However, as an adult I did become interested in history and - amusingly enough for this book - even picked up an American history high school text book at a garage sale and read the whole thing. It wasn't exactly fun, and took more discipline than I currently have, but I re-learned a lot. Now I have biographies of Aaron Burr & Alexander Hamilton in the reading stack...

As to Helen Keller, I wasn't aware of her political stances, but Loewen does not mention another area that prevented history text authors from honoring her whole story: religion. "She was an ardent follower of the Universalism of Emanuel Swedenborg, a mystic born in 1688." I don't know much about what he taught, but it's far enough out there that Keller's beliefs could not be detailed in mainstream history textbooks. So by excluding important aspects of her life such as political activism and religion, we're left with the superficial outline of Keller's life that Loewen complains about.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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LanDroid wrote:At year’s end, no student can remember 840 main ideas, not to mention 890 terms and countless other factoids. So students and teachers fall back on one main idea: to memorize the terms for the test on that chapter, then forget them to clear the synapses for the next chapter. No wonder so many high school graduates cannot remember in which century the Civil War was fought!
As a teacher (at a university, and in the sciences) I find this to be a depressing truth about education. In my courses, I try to emphasise concepts rather than content, but most of my students seem to have come from high school with such a deeply ingrained idea of "just give me the answers" it's like you're fighting them to learn more than anything else.

I don't know who told them having answers is better than understanding things, but they're doing us all a horrid disservice.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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capricorn152244 wrote: 2. The way history is taught is inferior: disconnected from the present, overly optimistic, moral signalling on patriotism, taught as memorisation.
I think public education was originally designed as a program to create "good citizens." Part of that role is submissiveness. As a result there was never any examination in high school history (in my experience) of the motivations behind opposition such as labor unions. There was equally no examination of the motivation behind lynchings or misogyny.

There was some sense of progress, what it consisted of and how it came about. Not just when women got the right to vote, but how. I had one teacher who taught the "overreach" theory about the Radical Republicans - that they got out in front of the American people and so a backlash was "inevitable." None of my American history classes ever got as far as 1948 and the Dixiecrats. In one of them, the result was as if Hiroshima was the climax of American progress.

What we did not learn was how to do reasoned and civil debate. The classes never imagined that being a good citizen might involve debate on the internet.
capricorn152244 wrote:3. History textbooks are terrible.
Discussion Questions for the Introduction:
1. Do you agree with any of Loewen's claims in the introduction? Did you have experiences in high school (or college) that run counter to his claims?
No, not really. I was trying to think (in part because it is possible I will be a history teacher next year) how to do better. I think a grand narrative about democracy and rights would open lots of interesting discussions. Why people in the minority need to be protected from the majority, and what that might imply for protecting the rich from redistribution of income as well as for protecting races and religions from bigotry.

I think there is too little understanding of economic forces, but they were raised for us in connection with the Civil War and why the North won.

Loewen's big point (IMO) about repressing feelings of those whose groups have been victimized was spot on. This business of avoiding discussion of awkward facts is an ancestor of our post-truth approach to politics today.
Last edited by Harry Marks on Tue Feb 05, 2019 3:44 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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Dexter wrote:But there is also the problem of large class sizes, making discussion more difficult,
This has in principle been solved by small group methods. In practice that can be messy and time-consuming. But as teachers recognize that engagement by the students is the key missing ingredient, more of us are learning to structure these experiences so that the students make emotional connections to the issues.
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Re: Ch. 1 - Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making

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Harry Marks wrote:
Dexter wrote:But there is also the problem of large class sizes, making discussion more difficult,
This has in principle been solved by small group methods.
Do you mean "small group methods" to be used with a larger group?
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