We mourn the loss of our friend and colleague and remain committed to the work he began.
Should we have dropped the atom bomb on Nagasaki? (Please note: We did so three days after Hiroshima, before ascertaining the impact of Hiroshima upon the Japanese government.) Why did we drop it? What was its impact upon the course of history? U.S. history courses almost never address these questions. The past happened. History is …
Introducing the Series:Historical Inaccuracies Are Barriers to Racial Justice Recognizing that inaccurate history often subtly promotes continuing white supremacy, the National Education Association (NEA) commissioned these articles and has posted some of them in slightly different form at its website. I thank Harry Lawson and others at NEA for the commission, for editorial suggestions, and for …
Table of Contents of Lies My Teacher Told Me Chapter 1) Handicapped by History: The Process of Hero-making. The truth about Helen Keller – Socialist, Woodrow Wilson – racist (among other things), Betsy Ross -tourist attraction, etc. Chapter 2) 1493: The True Importance Of Christopher Columbus. From the real ‘discoverer’ of the New World to the …
In 2005, Recorded Books invited Loewen to create a “course” in U.S. History for them, which they titled Rethinking Our Past. It sold well and remains available. In addition to the fourteen lectures, it comes with a “Course Guide” with useful images, intriguing questions, suggested sites to visit relevant to each era, and a compact …
Essay 12: How Thanksgiving Helps Keep Us Ethnocentric Recognizing that inaccurate history often subtly promotes continuing white supremacy, the National Education Association (NEA) commissioned these articles and has posted some of them in slightly different form at its website. I thank Harry Lawson and others at NEA for the commission, for editorial suggestions, and for other …
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Essay 10: The Pantheon of Explorers Recognizing that inaccurate history often subtly promotes continuing white supremacy, the National Education Association (NEA) commissioned these articles and has posted some of them in slightly different form at its website. I thank Harry Lawson and others at NEA for the commission, for editorial suggestions, and for other assistance. As …
One reason why U.S. history gets liked least is because it is more dominated by the textbook than any other course. This is astounding and unfortunate, because textbooks are so bad, so boring, and so big that many classrooms just read them – nothing else! General Problems With Textbooks The “authors” of most U.S. history …
If you or your school district has the autonomy, don’t adopt any of the 800-1,300 page textbooks. Instead, consider one of these. Then supplement with solid web sources, setting students forth to “do” history themselves, critical books like Lies My Teacher Told Me, etc. Students will grow much more involved than if they just slog …
Using Teaching What Really Happened This book is particularly used in colleges and departments of education, especially for courses on how to teach social studies, civics, and U.S. history, but also sometimes in world history and in teaching middle and elementary school. Teaching with Teaching What Really Happened “Teaching with Teaching What Really Happened” is …
As Lies My Teacher Told Me kept selling, Loewen began to find quotations from it popping up all over the web. Initially he was most pleased to find “Those who don’t remember the past are condemned to repeat the eleventh grade,” quoted widely, because he meant it as a joke and as a way to …