6 Lies I Learned in History Class

How about you?

Not that it was intentional, but my otherwise good history teachers in small-town North Carolina told several lies. Or to be generous, in retrospect, they offered flawed and ignorant interpretations of history.

1. One high school teacher did not seem to know much about religion at that stage of his young life, when all he had was an undergraduate degree in history, with a minor in education. We grew up in overwhelmingly Protestant small towns in the Bible Belt with few Catholics. Trying to explain the Protestant Reformation, he hesitated. “There were the Christians and the Catholics…” he said. The Catholics and the Christians fought each other in Europe, and the losers came to America so they could worship freely, and peacefully, tolerating each other. It was not until I studied religious and European history that I began to understand the Protestant Reformation as a rebellion against far-away centralized authority in Rome demanding obedience to one dogma; to learn about America’s early religious conflicts in MA, RI, MD, and VA colonies, and the need to separate church and state to reduce sectarian strife.

2. Numerous teachers asserted that Columbus “discovered” America, on an almost entirely empty continent. This was undoubtedly what my teachers were taught, but it is patently untrue. There were actually millions of indigenous peoples — some scholars estimate 100 million — living on the continent before it was “discovered” by Europeans. In the late 19th century, many states began to observe Columbus Day as a way to help Italian Americans feel included in the history of the country. In the early to mid-19th century, Italians were othered, as “swarthy,” non-white, and faced vicious bigotry. They were once discriminated against almost as much as African Americans. Columbus Day observances have historically excluded Native Americans. Several states with large native populations now observe “Indigenous Peoples Day.”

3. Reconstruction was terrible, with corrupt carpetbaggers and scalawags perpetuating great injustices in the (white) South.

4. Slavery, Jim Crow, Black history, women’s history, Native American and Latino American history were largely ignored when I was in school. Booker T. Washington, George Washington Carver, and Harriet Tubman were almost the only major African-American leaders highlighted.

5. Americans are different, exceptional, and far better than other nationalities. Other countries “hate us for our freedoms,” a false and extremely simplistic statement perpetrated by more than one of my teachers. We Americans weren’t capable of the virulent prejudice and cruelty that the Germans, the Japanese, and the Russians perpetuated on the world before, during, and after World War II. There was little effort to understand or explain how or why the Germans, the Japanese, and the Russians behaved the way they did, and the social forces that shaped them. Decades later, I visited Vietnam and got more than a glimpse of what we Americans perpetrated there. At the same time, I began to see that war from the point of view of a South Vietnamese tour guide who seemed to regret that the Americans abandoned their country. I began to appreciate that the war was far more complex than I perceived it as an anti-war teenager.

6. “America could get along just fine without the rest of the world,” another history teacher at my high school declared. “We are a mostly self-sufficient nation, but the rest of the world needs us too much. Because we are such a generous, good-hearted people and altruistic nation, we have a sense of noblesse oblige, to help the less privileged and less fortunate.” He taught or understood little about America’s strategic interests, its’ needs for the world’s products, or its dependence on global markets to sell American products.

Was I damaged by being told these “lies”? Of course not. Over time, I learned to become a critical thinker, skeptical of easy assertions. That’s what education is about — teaching students HOW to think, not what to think.

Years or decades from now, some of our own historical interpretations may be viewed as flawed or ignorant. It is therefore advisable to hold our opinions vigorously and passionately but lightly, humbly, not dogmatically. Some social studies teachers turn their classrooms into debating societies, where students learn the fun of building persuasive arguments and having fascinating discussions. However, this requires students to be motivated to learn the background of historical topics before engaging in debate.

What were some lies you learned in history class that you later learned weren’t true? Let me know in the comments or by replying to this email.

“Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong” by Dr. James Loewen was a national bestseller (more than a million copies sold) and won the National Book Award after it was first released in 1995. It has been repeatedly updated. In 2018, on the cusp of a new edition, Loewen told Alia Wong of The Atlantic that public schools have helped create a post-truth environment by their flawed approach to teaching the country’s past. “By providing students an inadequate history education, Loewen argues, America’s schools breed adults who tend to conflate empirical fact and opinion, and who lack the media literacy necessary to navigate conflicting information,” Wong wrote.

History educators should teach students “to challenge, to read critically,” teach causality, Loewen says, to ponder,  “what causes racism, for example, what causes a decrease in racism”? Textbooks should admit