Review (PDF) Teaching What Really Happened: How To Avoid The Tyranny Of Textbooks And Get Students Excited About Doing History (Multicultural Education Series)
In this follow-up to his landmark bestseller, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James Loewen continues to break silences and change our perspectives on U.S. history. Loewen 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? Why Did the South Secede? In Teaching What Really Happened, Loewen goes beyond the usual textbook-dominated viewpoints 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 race relations. Throughout, Loewen shows time and again how teaching what really happened connects better with all kinds of students to get them excited about history.
Series: Multicultural Education
Paperback: 264 pages
Publisher: Teachers College Press; Multicultural Education Series edition (October 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0807749915
ISBN-13: 978-0807749913
Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 0.6 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #61,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #35 in Books > History > Historical Study & Educational Resources > Study & Teaching #45 in Books > Education & Teaching > Schools & Teaching > Instruction Methods > Social Studies #49 in Books > Education & Teaching > Schools & Teaching > Education Theory > History
This book is partly an attack on how history is taught at the high school level and partly a rewriting/explanation of the six areas that teachers get wrong most often. Both are problematic, although his main point-- that bad textbooks are boring-- is indisputable. (His constant mentioning of his own previous book as the antidote certainly made it clear what he thought a good one looks like!) I'll admit I was surprised at the statistics on how few high school teachers had taken history classes, until I looked in the footnotes and found the number was from 20 years ago-- they've changed the standards since then, actually. Eventually I found myself reading with one finger in the back so I could see how old & outdated his information was, point by point, although I appreciate that there were footnotes at all.Some of his points seem well-argued, others are odd (his argument that you should not teach anything you don't understand, for instance-- he doesn't teach the Progressive Era, apparently-- why wouldn't you go learn about it if it's your job to teach history?), and still others are just silly-- I have a PhD, and, while I love to see my students learn about history, they don't immediately know more than me when they start learning (if they did, I'd want my money back from my grad school!)The part of secession was interesting, and there he quotes to back up his argument, but the facts start getting very funky toward the end of this book. The final chapter presents an argument for a periodization of American history that features "The Nadir," supposedly the low-point of race relations, dating from 1890-1940.
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