Post 2

      So far, I have read half of Lies My Teacher Told Me, and it has been fairly interesting. It has jumped time periods from Helen Keller, to Columbus, to slavery, and so on, but it has been able to connect all of these seemingly random topics to an overall theme of how teachers and textbooks only teach the feel-good, nice side of history. For example, almost everyone knows the story of how Helen Keller, a deaf and blind girl, overcame all odds with the help of her teacher Anne Sullivan and learned how to live with her disability. Teachers everywhere preach, "Look what she accomplished," yet, they forget to actually tell what she accomplished. Loewen reminds his readers that Helen Keller became a radical Socialist, and supported poor and oppressed people everywhere, because she identified with them as a result of her being deaf and blind. She heavily supported the communist USSR, and at the time, was a very controversial and at times notorious public figure. Loewen explains how the public view of Keller, like many other people in American history, was altered and hero-fied by the media, textbooks, and teachers to the point where no one knows the true story of Helen Keller's life; all they know is some vague, feel-good story of how a girl overcame serious disabilities, and nothing about her radical views or what she fought for after she graduated college.  
     Loewen also describes how the perception of other parts and figures of American history have been twisted to fit into a very Euro-centristic view. He points out how most textbooks show a very European view of the first Thanksgiving: that the Pilgrims provided all the food and were dressed in their very best attire, while the Native Americans showed up barely dressed and provided the bare minimum. He also shows how some textbooks take such a Euro-centered view that they say that slavery was good for the slaves. His main focus during the first half of the book is how the perception of history has been altered to show the Europeans as the good guys, no matter what, and the Native Americans and Africans as almost second class human beings. Textbooks and teachers are making excuses for European actions instead of actually telling students the truth.
    I predict that the second half of the book will be much like the first half: that Loewen will continue to identify specific instances in American history that have been extremely skewed and altered in textbooks that are in the classrooms, and use real evidence and clues to show the flawed reality of history instead of the fairy tale version that shows all American heroes as flawless, amazing people.