Assignment 4
Loewen, in his book, Lies My Teacher Told Me, expresses a strange observation that although Americans love history, historical classes are of no interest to most students. Historical textbooks have been criticized for their misrepresentation of the past. Arguably, historical books give a culturally biased report of American history. Most of those historical textbooks fail to recognize native Americans, African American, female and Latino readers.
I think the representation of American history has followed the ethnocentric approach. Most of the historians have exaggeratedly represented the American culture as superb than others. I believe that it is, for this reason, most of the American students have realized the cultural biases and thus hate history. Historical depictions of popular icons have been made with a Eurocentric approach. I think the representation of western historical figures only considers the positive impacts ignoring the adverse effects of them on native Americans and Africans.
I think Loewen points out how the historical discourse of slavery lacks honesty in its representation in historical books. For instance, historical books have linked failure with blacks, as in the case of the rosy account of Reconstruction. The issue of nationalism has led to the poor depiction of the American government as history textbooks seem to praise poor governance through praising poor policies. Heroification is what has guided the writing of history textbooks. The presentation of historical figures in history textbooks has focused on making them heroes. This process hinders the truth, and thus students have realized no sense in reading about the past as it misreported the reality.