Read Lies My Teacher Told Me Online
Authors: James W. Loewen
Lies My Teacher Told Me (31 page)
Textbook authors may not even need pressure from publishers, the right wing, the upper
class, or cultural archetypes to avoid social stratification. As part of the process of
heroification, textbook authors treat America itself as a hero, indeed as the hero of their books, so they remove its warts. Even to report the facts of income and
wealth distribution might seem critical of America the hero, for it is difficult to come
up with a theory of social justice that can explain why 1 percent of the population controls almost 40 percent of the wealth. Could the other 99
percent of us be that lazy or otherwise undeserving? To go on to include some of the mechanismsunequal schooling
and the likeby which the upper class stays upper would clearly involve criticism of our
beloved nation.
For any or all of these reasons, textbooks minimize social stratification. They then do
something less comprehensible: they fail to explain the benefits of free enterprise.
Writing about an earlier generation of textbooks, Frances FitzGerald pointed out that the
books ignored “the virtues as well as the vices of their own economic system.”42 Teachers might mention free enterprise with respect, but seldom do the words become more
than a slogan,45 This omission is strange, for capitalism has its advantages, after all. Basketball star
Michael Jordan, Chrysler executive Lee lacocca, and ice-cream makers Ben and Jerry all got
rich by supplying goods and services that people desired. To be sure, much social
stratification cannot be justified so neatly, because it results from the abuse ofwealth
and power by those who have these advantages to shut out those who do not. As a social and
economic order, the capitalist system offers much to criticize but also much to praise.
America is a land of opportunity for many people. And for all the distortions capitalism imposes upon
it, democracy also benefits from the separation of power between public and private spheres. Our history textbooks
never touch on these benefits.
Publishers or those who influence them have evidently concluded that what American society
needs to stay strong is citizens who assent to its social structure and economic system
without thought. As a consequence, today's textbooks defend our economic system
mindlessly, with insupportable pieties about its unique lack of stratification; thus they
produce alumni of American history courses unable to criticize or defend our system of
social stratification knowledgeably.
But isn't it nice simply to believe that America is equal? Maybe the “land of opportunity”
archetype is an empowering mythmaybe believing in it might even help make it come true.
For ifstudents think the sky is the limit, they may reach for the sky, while if they don't, they won't.
The analogy of gender points to the problem with this line of thought. How could high
school girls understand their place in American history iftheir textbooks told them that,
from colonial America to the present, women have had equal opportunity for upward mobility
and political participation? How could they then explain why no woman has been president?
Girls would have to infer, perhaps unconsciously, that it has been their own gender's
fault, a conclusion that is hardly empowering.
Textbooks do tell how women were denied the right to vote in many states until 1920 and
faced other barriers to upward mobility. Textbooks also tell of barriers confronting
racial minorities. The final question Land of Promise asks students following its “Social Mobility” section is “What social barriers prevented
blacks, Indians, and women from competing on an equal basis with white male colonists?”
After its passage extolling upward mobility. The Challenge of Freedom notes, “Not all people, however, enjoyed equal rights or an equal chance to improve their
way oflifc,” and goes on to address the issues ofsexism and racism. But neither here nor
anywhere else do Promise or Challenge (or most other textbooks) hint that opportunity might not be equal today for white
Americans of the lower and working classes,44 Perhaps as a result, even business leaders and Republicans, the respondents statistically
most likely to engage in what sociologists call “blaming the victim,” blame the social
system rather than African Americans for black poverty and blame the system rather than
women for the latter's unequal achievement in the workplace. In sum, affluent Americans,
like their textbooks, are willing to credit racial discrimination as the cause of poverty among blacks
and Indians and sex discrimination as the cause ofwomen's inequality but don't see class
discrimination as the cause ofpoverty in general.
More than math or science, more even than American literature, courses in American history
hold the promise oftelling high school students how they and their parents, their
communities, and their society came to be as they are. One way things are is unequal by
social class. Although poor and working-class children usually cannot identify the cause
of their alienation, history often turns them off because it justifies rather than
explains the present. When these students react by dropping out, intellectually if not
physically, their poor school performance helps convince them as well as their peers in the faster tracks that the
system is meritocratic and that they themselves lack merit. Zn the end, the absence of
social-class analysis in American history courses amounts to one more way that education
in America is rigged against the working class.
The historian must have no country.
What did you learn in school today, dear little boy of mine? I learned our government must
be strong. It's always right and never wrong. . . .
That's what I learned in school.
Jo/in Quincy Adams We have to face the unpleasant as well as the affirmative side of the human story,
including our own story as a nation, our own stories of our peoples. We have got to have
the ugly facts in order to protect us from the official view of reality.
Bin Meyers3 As long as you are convinced you have never done anything, you can never do anything.
Malcolm X To study foreign affairs without putting ourselves into others' shoes is to deal in
illusion and to prepare students for a lifelong misunderstanding of our place in the world.
PaulGagnon Song by Tom Paxton, 1963s
Some traditional historians, critics ofthe new emphasis on social and cultural history,
believe that American history textbooks have been seduced from their central narrative,
which they see as the story of the American state.
Methinks they protest too much. The expanded treatments that textbooks now give to women,
slavery, modes of transportation, developments in popular music, and other topics not
directly related to the state have yet to produce a new core narrative. Therefore they
appear as unnecessary diversions that only interrupt the basic narrative that the
textbooks still tell: the history of the American government. Two ofthe twelve textbooks
I studied were “inquiry” textbooks, assembled from primary sources. They no longer make
the story of the state quite so central," The ten narrative textbooks in my sample
continue to pay overwhelming attention to the actions of the executive branch of the
federal government. They still demarcate US. history as a series of presidential
administrations.
Thus, for instance, Land ofPromise grants each president a biographical vignette, even William Henry Harrison {who served for
one month), but never mentions arguably our greatest composer, Charles Ives; our most
influential architect, Frank Lloyd Wright; or our most prominent non-Indian humanitarian
on behalf of Indians, Helen Hunt Jackson, Although textbook authors include more social
history than they used to, they still regard the actions and words of the state as
incomparably more important than what the American people were doing, listening to,
sleeping in. living through, or thinking about. Particularly for the centuries before the
Woodrow Wilson administration, this stress on the state is inappropriate, because the
federal executive was not nearly as important then as now.
What story do textbooks tell about our government? First, they imply that the state we
live in today is the state created in 1789. Textbook authors overlook the possibility
that the balance of powers set forth in the Constitution, granting some power to each
branch of the federal government, some to the states, and reserving some for individuals,
has been decisively altered over the last two hundred years. The federal government they picture is still the people's servant,
manageable and tractable. Paradoxically, textbooks then underplay the role of
nongovernmental institutions or private citizens in bringing about improvements in the
environment, race relations, education, and other social issues. In short, textbook
authors portray a heroic state, and, like their other heroes, this one is pretty much
without blemishes. Such an approach converts textbooks into anticitizenship
manualshandbooks for acquiescence.
Perhaps the best way to show textbooks' sycophancy is by examining how authors treat the
government when its actions have been least defensible. Let us begin with considerations
relating to U.S. foreign policy.
College courses in political science generally take one of two approaches when analyzing
U.S, actions abroad. Some professors and textbooks are quite critical of what might be
called the American colossus. In this “American century,” the United States has been the
most powerful nation on earth and has typically acted to maintain its hegemony. This
view holds that we Americans abandoned our revolutionary ideology long ago, if indeed we
ever held one, and now typically act to repress the legitimate attempts at
self-determination of other nations and peoples.
More common is the realpolitik view. George Kennan, who for almost half a century has been
an architect of and commentator on U.S. foreign policy, provided a succinct statement of
this approach in 1948. As head of the Policy Planning Staffofthe State Department,
Kennan wrote in a now famous memorandum:
We have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6,3% of its population. In this
situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real test in the
coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain
this position of disparity. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the
luxury of altruism and world benefactionunreal objectives such as human rights, the
raising ofliving standards, and democratization.
Under this view, the historian or political scientist proceeds by identifying American
national interests as articulated by policymakers in the past as well as by historians
today. Then s/he analyzes our acts and policies to assess the degree to which they
furthered these interests.
High school American history textbooks do not, of course, adopt or even hint at the
American colossus view. Unfortunately, they also omit the realpolitik approach. Instead,
they take a strikingly different tack. They see our policies as part of a morality play in which the United States typically acts on behalf of human
rights, democracy, and “the American way.” When Americans have done wrong, according to
this view, it has been because others misunderstood us, or perhaps because we
misunderstood the situation. But always our motives were good. This approach might be
called the “international good guy” view.
Textbooks do not indulge in any direct discussion of what “good” is or might mean. In
Frances FitzGerald's phrase, textbooks present the United States as “a kind of Salvation
Army to the rest of the world.”8 In so doing, they echo the nation our leaders like to present to its citizens: the
supremely1 moral, disinterested peacekeeper, the supremely responsible world citizen. “Other
countries look to their own interests,” said Pres. John F. Kennedy in 1961, pridefully
invoking what he termed our “obligations” around the globe. “Only the United Statesand we
are only six percent of the world's populationbears this kind of burden.”9 Since at least the 1920s, textbook authors have claimed that the United States is more generous than any other nation in the world in providing foreign aid.10 The myth was untrue then; it is likewise untrue now. Today at least a dozen European and
Arab nations devote much larger proportions of their gross domestic product (GDP) or total
governmental expenditures to foreign aid than does the United States.
The desire to emphasize our humanitarian dealings with the world influences what
textbook authors choose to include and omit. All but one of the twelve textbooks contain
at least a paragraph on the Peace Corps. The tone of these treatments is adoring. “The
Peace Corps made friends for America everywhere,” gushes Life and Liberty. Triumph of eke American Nation infers our larger purpose: “The Peace Corps symbolized America's desire to provide humane
assistance as well as economic and military leadership in the non-Communist world.” As a shaper of history, however, the Peace Corps has been insignificant. It does
not disparage this fine institution to admit chat its main impact has been on the
intellectual development of its own volunteers.
More important and often less affable American exports are our multinational
corporations. One multinational alone, International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), which
took the lead in prompting our government to destabilize the socialist government of
Salvador Allende, had more impact on Chile than all the Peace Corps workers America ever
sent there. The same might be said of Union Carbide in India and United Fruit in
Guatemala, By influencing U.S. government policies, other American-based multinationals
have had even more profound effects on other nations.11 At times the corporations' influence has been constructive. For example, when Pres. Gerald
Ford was trying to perWATCHIMG BIG BROTHER
Textbook authors select images to reinforce the idea that our country's rnain role in the
world is to bring about good. This photograph from Life arid Liberty shows “a Peace Corps volunteer teaching in Botswana.”