Loewen
The writer introduces his assertions by showing how the high school students have contempt for history. History subject is considered by the students to be the most irrelevant. They avoid it where possible despite scoring high marks in it especially for the non-white students who do worse in art subjects. Something must be wrong in such a scenario considering that history is cannot be said to be more difficult than math’s – trigonometry. Perceiving the morale in their class rooms , the history teachers response is to abandon the textbooks , which are “overstaffed “ and come up with their own courses of American history. The same attitude can be found with college teachers who disregard the high school history knowledge, a case not seen in other learning field. History is very important to Americans as it reveals how we got to the present moment (Loewen, 2007. The American history is full of important stories and is liked outside classroom. The problem is that history teaching is dominated by history textbooks making it boring. Stories told in the books are always predictable and exclude real suspense or conflict which might reflect the bad side of Americans’ national character (Loewen, 2007).
America is portrayed as having final solution historical problems and due to lack of reality and suspense, students lose interest. The books also fail to use the present to show the past. They are different from other teaching material. They full of information but they make teachers leave out what is important. They are also full of omission and errors. The introduction resonates well with titles assertion of teachers’ lies. The claims presented in the introduction part are partially true given that not many students study history as a subject. The colleges have been influenced by these inadequacies resulting to teachers disregarding the high school history.
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Loewen’s Hero making
this focuses on “heroification” referred to by Loewen as a process through which American people are made heroes while they are just ordinary people. The chapter also shows how people’s roles are understed in the society or overstated so as to have such people be seen as heroes. The education media is ported to make human beings as perfect creatures having no credibility, pain, conflict or any human interest. The textbooks should not only indicate what people have achieved but how they have achieved it. The writer discusses Helen Keller and how her activism in social justice and her support for U.S.S.R is not taught to students. Wilson coincidentally secretly started a war against Bolsheviks which was eclipsed by his support for League of Nations and the wars that tasking place in Central America(Loewen, 2007).
The chapter’s context relates to the assertion of the whole text in that it outlays how significant information about American history has lead to misunderstanding of the subject. The chapter claims that heroification has relates to the knowledge and social issues in the American community. The point on knowledge focuses on the various omissions made by text book writers so that the information conveyed to the students does not correlate to the reality of historic figures and occurrences. Social issues claims highlighted by the text relate matters such as racism and colonialism are significant in American history. Some of the claims in this chapter are true since the history text books rarely conveys all round information about an important historical figure. Individuals are portrayed as having accomplished a lot with little information on how the accomplishments were achieved or their weakness their weaknesses which would have prevented more. As a student, there must be a lot of historical information that I need to consider given the nature of the available textbooks.
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Kohl’s Rosa Parks
This article is an important and timely exploration of the way in which Rosa Parks ‘story together with Montgomery bus boycott has been wrongly taught in schools through distortion. The text outlines problems with how Parks is presented and tries to provide a more politically pointed, historically correct and age-appropriate history alternative. The text also includes Cynthia Brown’s original essay about rights activists – Rosa Parks. It appears as a guide on how the evaluate textbooks whose content touches on such a critical U.S history period. The story also appears innocent enough. Parks is respectfully treated, and the boycott is attributed to the African American community who finally win the battle (Kohl, 2007).
The content relates to the text given that the education system is discredited for teaching the young people wrong information about Rosa Parks’ when examined carefully , the text reveals various distressing characteristics whose aim is present a movement that has been cautiously planned into an outburst whose basis was anger and frustration. The text applies to the society in that it touches on the thorny issue of racism as seen Montgomery’s boycott aimed at desegregation. The text claims about history distortion is seen in how the bus boycott incident is focused on one individual as being heroic. The text identifies with firm belief that not everyone can become a Rosa Park but they all have a role in social changes as did the other people in the bus. The text relates to the society need for individuals who are willing to cross the segregation boundaries and motivate others likeminded people to do the same.
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Loewen’s John Brown
The chapter focuses on Abraham Lincoln and John Brown who were major figures in the abolition of racism and slavery. John Brown is a controversial person whose sanity had been questioned given that he was a white person fighting defending the rights of the black slaves. In the textbooks, he is shown as a hero and the fact that he took part in Pottawatomie attack is omitted since the authors did not want to present a negative image of Christianity. The textbooks authors continually ignore Brown’s ideas since in their view; his acts make him not eligible to be sympathetically considered. Lincoln though presented in a positive image, also had his dark side. While other people who were murderers such as Christopher Columbus are presented with a heroic nature , the text book authors fail to represent Brown favorably just because of his single action of violence. The history books show no fairness in their narration of past important figures in all contexts. The tone used in description of Brown is different from that used for other historical figures(Loewen, 2007).
The content of this text resonates with society issue of withholding information and the concealing of vital information in order to present people differently from the way they actually are. The text claims that Brown is not given the honor he deserves which is quite true as his act of taking part in one violent attack cannot take away his good side. The chapter relates to the social structures and humanity, where racism was ingrained in the past society while some people stood for the right of all humanity. The text is a reflection of my belief that information should be withheld or distorted to misrepresent history.
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Loewen’s Vietnam
This chapter focuses on the writers view on the citizen’s perception of Vietnam War. Loewen refers to the polls which were asking the American about their views on troops coming back home. The majority favored the idea of troops coming back home .The demographic of the participants was grouped into the people with grade school education, high school education background and college education. The author found a margin close to 10 to 1 for audiences who believed that people who had college education much more dovish. Most of the responses portrayed educated people as being more critical, informed and tolerant in issues concerning war or racism. However, Loewen presents the truth as being opposite of the students prediction as even the people with grade school education were against the Vietnam War. He outlines two conclusions for the kind of hawkishness seen in educated American – allegiance and socialization (Loewen, 2007). Educated people tend to side more with American Society and its policies while schools are important grounds for socialization. The text tend to assert that public opinions are a demonstration of how people fail to think while education make students to just trust the society as being good while not thinking about it . American history in the text book does not allow for understanding problems with historical roots. Some people saw Vietnam as being idiosyncrasy (Loewen, 2007).
This text tends to show how recorded historical information may differ from the ideal case in the ground. It relates to the kind of knowledge imparted on students which is quite different from the actual knowledge from a historical context. It seems to claim that education knowledge offered from text books cannot be actualized by learners but is used to set social structures in terms of stratification. I agree with this claim since a comparison between text book knowledge and real surveys shows varying information.
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Fog of War Movie
This is a film which narrates the life of Robert S. McNamara, as the American Secretary of Defense working under the administrations of Johnson and Kennedy presidencies. The film mixes an interview with McNamara and a historical footage and allows him to respond from his perspective. The director of the film outlines various lessons drawn from the life of McNamara resulting to a review of a very controversial figure of the U.S government in 20th century. A good lesson is that seeing and beliefs are wrong most of the times. More films show generals discussing whether Gulf of Tonkin event occurred or not. Eventually, the film shows the attack as probably not having occurred. It is later showed that another attack happened. The film shows the belief of McNamara as being different from that of Joint Chiefs and he believes that they made wrong decisions in troop deployments. The film shows that while the Americans believed the Vietnam War as being Cold War, it was actually a civil war. The differing beliefs are portrayed by the tension between McNamara and LBJ which finally made him to step down (Morris ,2003).
The context of the text relates the historical times where Americans seemed ignorant of the facts on the ground. The film seems to claim that though processes of the people in power at the time differed considerably. It reviews the political scientist and historians and how their knowledge on the society reactions as especially on the Vietnam War differed. The claims can be seen in the lack of accurate information on occurrence of incidences such as Gulf of Tonkin. These films assertions relate to my views that people’s choice to belief information cannot be changed and therefore, even in historical context perceptions will continue to differ.
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References
Kohl, H. (2007).She would Not Be Moved: How We Tell the Story of Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. New Press
Loewen J.(2007).Lies My teacher told me: Everything Your American Textbook Got Wrong. Simon and Schuster
Morris E. (2003).The Fog of War: Eleven Lessons from the Life of Robert S. McNamara. Biography. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oZLjaAPoAo
