Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen, Chapter Eight (Watching Big Brother: What Textbooks Teach About the Federal Government).
Reading this chapter was odd to me. I have studied governments and governmental actions in my political science courses for years now and yet I never considered how traditional high school history textbooks treat the government in their analyses. I have to agree with Loewen after reading this chapter that textbooks are doing Americans a disservice by understating the actions of the US government.
To pretend that our government and our society is all flowers and happiness and that we are 100% committed to helping other nations is not a fair representation. To teach this to students is misleading and makes it impossible to have an informed citizenry - something that is necessary in a democracy. Loewen asserts that "in short, textbook authors portray a heroic state, and like their other heroes, this one is pretty much without blemishes" (210). In simpler terms, textbook authors are giving a picture-perfect perspective of the government that is not representative of reality. They also try to protect the government from looking like they are doing anything wrong. When they do portray this type of view in textbooks and admit that something wrong happened they portray it is as if "others misunderstood us, or perhaps because we misunderstood the situation. But always our motives were good" and he continues that they portray the United States government as the "'international good guy'" (211).
Loewen provides multiple examples where it is illustrated that this is simply not the case. Textbooks repeatedly try to rationalize U.S. foreign policy to be about humanitarianism, but it tends to rely more upon our self-interests. Throughout history, the United States and US agencies have made attempts to bring down the leaders of other states, such as the case of Fidel Castro in Cuba. The US has also taken elected leaders out of power in their nations and replaced them with leaders that we agree with, with no regard for the fact that many individuals in these nations will not support the new leader (214). When any of these actions are mentioned, they are always put into a context of not knowing why something happened the way it did or that the US was looking to help the other nation, even though that is not reality. "Since textbook authors are unwilling to criticize the US government, they present opponents of the United States that are not intelligible. Only by disclosing our actions can textbooks provide readers with rational accounts of our adversaries" (217). But this cannot be done because textbook authors do not want to present the real situation because it does not shed favorable light upon the government.
The only real controversy that textbooks tend to cover is the Watergate scandal, but they don't delve deep into that either. Loewen spends a great deal of time outlining the actions that the FBI took against Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights movement, and yet there are still textbooks out there that "actually credit the government, almost single-handedly, for the advances made during the period" when we know that they were trying to make King disappear or let go of the Civil Rights movement altogether (227).
After reading so many chapters of Loewen's text, I have to question why textbooks have been able to get away with these false portrayals for so many years? If textbooks continue to be this way, then we need to really make a point to show perspectives that aren't in the textbook during out class sessions until we can really push textbook companies to be reality-based rather than only covering content that makes the United States look favorable. History isn't perfect and our actions aren't always the most honorable or with the best intentions, but that does not mean that it did not happen. I would rather know the nasty truth than be stuck believing in a false reality for my whole life. I hope that my students feel the same way too.
No comments:
Post a Comment