Teaching What Really Happened: How to Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing

by Loewen, James W.

• ISBN13: 9780807749913
• ISBN10: 0807749915
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-10-30
• Publisher: Teachers College Pr

Summary

In this follow-up to his landmark bestseller, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Loewen once again takes history textbooks to task for their perpetuations of myth and their lack of awareness of today’s multicultural student audience (not to mention the astonishing number of facts” they just got plain wrong). How did people get here?” Why did Europe win?” In Teaching What Really Happened, Loewen goes beyond the usual textbook-dominated social studies course to illuminate a wealth of intriguing, often hidden facts about America’s past. Calling for a new way to teach history, this book will help teachers move beyond traditional textbooks to tackle difficult but important topics like conflicts with Native Americans, slavery, and racial oppression. Throughout, Loewen shows time and again how teaching what really happened” not only connects better with all kinds of students, it better prepares those students to be tomorrow’s citizens

Author Biography

James W. Loewen is the bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me and Lies Across America. He taught race relations for twenty years at the University of Vermont and gives workshops for teacher groups around the United States. He has been an expert witness in more than 50 civil rights, voting rights, and employment cases. Visit the author's website: http://sundown.afro.illinois,.edu

Table of Contents

Series Foreword	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xv
Introduction: History as Weapon	p. 1
A Lesson from Mississippi	p. 2
A Lesson from Vermont	p. 7
Why History Is Important to Students	p. 10
Why History Is Important to Society	p. 15
The Tyranny of Coverage	p. 19
Forests, Trees, and Twigs	p. 19
Winnowing Trees	p. 21
Deep Thinking	p. 23
Relevance to the Present	p. 25
Skills	p. 28
Getting the Principal on Board	p. 30
Coping with Reasons to Teach "As Usual"	p. 32
You Are Not Alone	p. 36
Bringing Students Along	p. 38
Expecting Excellence	p. 42
Racial and Socioeconomic Characteristics Affect Teacher Expectations	p. 42
Research on Teacher Expectations	p. 47
"Standardized" Tests Affect Teacher Expectations	p. 49
Statistical Processes Cause Cultural Bias in "Standardized" Tests	p. 51
Social Class Affects "Standardized" Test Scores	p. 54
Internalizing Expectations	p. 56
Teachers and "Standardized" Tests	p. 58
Teachers Can Create Their Own Expectations	p. 60
Historiography	p. 68
A Tale of Two Eras	p. 68
The Civil Rights Movement, Cognitive Dissonance, and Historiography	p. 71
Studying Bad History	p. 76
Other Ways to Teach Historiography	p. 80
Doing History	p. 83
Doing History to Critique History	p. 83
Writing a Paper	p. 87
How and When Did People Get Here?	p. 103
A Crash Course on Archeological Issues	p. 105
Presentism	p. 109
Today's Religions and Yesterday's History	p. 110
Conclusions About Presentism	p. 112
Chronological Ethnocentrism	p. 113
Primitive to Civilized	p. 114
Costs of Chronological Ethnocentrism	p. 116
Why Did Europe Win?	p. 123
The Important Questions	p. 123
Looking Around the World	p. 124
Explaining Civilization	p. 127
Making the Earth Round	p. 128
Why Did Columbus Win?	p. 131
The Columbian Exchange	p. 133
Ideological Results of Europe's Victory	p. 136
Cultural Diffusion and Syncretism Continue	p. 137
The $24 Myth	p. 141
Deconstructing the $24 Myth	p. 141
A More Accurate Story	p. 145
Functions of the Fable	p. 147
Overt Racism?	p. 150
Additional Considerations	p. 153
Teaching Slavery	p. 155
Relevance to the Present	p. 155
Hold a Meta-Conversation	p. 159
Slavery and Racism	p. 162
Four Key Problems of Slave Life	p. 165
Additional Problems in Teaching the History of Slavery	p. 170
Why Did the South Secede?	p. 175
Teachers Votes	p. 175
Teaching Against the Myth	p. 179
Examining Textbooks	p. 183
Genesis of the Problem	p. 186
The Nadir	p. 189
Contemporary Relevance	p. 189
Onset of the Nadir	p. 192
Historical Background	p. 194
Underlying Causes of the Nadir of Race Relations	p. 195
Students Can Reveal the Nadir Themselves	p. 197
During the Nadir, Whites Became White	p. 200
End of the Nadir	p. 204
Implications for Today	p. 206
Afterword: Still More Ways to Teach History	p. 209
Notes	p. 213
Index	p. 237
About the Author	p. 248
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