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

by James W. Loewen

Overview

“Should be in the hands of every history teacher in the country.”— Howard Zinn

James Loewen has revised Teaching What Really Happened, the bestselling, go-to resource for social studies and history teachers wishing to break away from standard textbook retellings of the past. In addition to updating the scholarship and anecdotes throughout, the second edition features a timely new chapter entitled "Truth" that addresses how traditional and social media can distort current events and the historical record. Helping students understand what really happened in the past will empower them to use history as a tool to argue for better policies in the present. Our society needs engaged citizens now more than ever, and this book offers teachers concrete ideas for getting students excited about history while also teaching them to read critically. It will specifically help teachers and students tackle important content areas, including Eurocentrism, the American Indian experience, and slavery.

Book Features:

• An up-to-date assessment of the potential and pitfalls of U.S. and world history education.
• Information to help teachers expect, and get, good performance from students of all racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds.
• Strategies for incorporating project-oriented self-learning, having students conduct online historical research, and teaching historiography.
• Ideas from teachers across the country who are empowering students by teaching what really happened.
• Specific chapters dedicated to five content topics usually taught poorly in today’s schools.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807749913
Publisher:	Teachers College Press
Publication date:	09/28/2009
Series:	Multicultural Education Series
Edition description:	Older Edition
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

James W. Loewen, distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians, is the bestselling author of Lies My Teacher Told Me and Lies Across America. He taught race relations for 20 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: sundown.tougaloo.edu/

Table of Contents

Series Foreword James A. Banks ix

Acknowledgments xv

What's Wrong with the Picture on the Cover? xv

Introduction: History as Weapon 1

A Lesson from Mississippi 2

A Lesson from Vermont 7

Why History Is Important to Students 11

Why History Is Important to Society 17

1 The Tyranny of Coverage 23

Forests, Trees, and Twigs 23

Winnowing Trees 25

Deep Thinking 27

Relevance to the Present 30

Skills 33

Getting the Principal on Board 35

Coping with Reasons to Teach "As Usual" 37

You Are Not Alone 41

Brining Students Along 42

2 Expecting Excellence 49

Student Characteristics Affect Teacher Expectations 49

"Standardized" Tests Affect Teacher Expectations 56

Statistical Processes Cause Cultural Bias in "Standardized" Tests 58

Internalizing Expectations 61

Teachers Can Create Their Own Expectations 64

3 Historiography 76

A Tale of Two Eras 76

The Civil Rights Movement, Cognitive Dissonance, and Historiography 79

Studying Bad History 84

Other Ways to Teach Historiography 87

4 Doing History 91

Doing History to Critique History 91

Writing a Paper 92

Bringing Families In 95

Local History 97

Getting Started 101

Final Product 103

Using the Product 104

5 Truth 110

Background of the Problem 111

Separating Matters of Fact from Matters of Opinion 115

Five Tests to Assess Credibility 117

6 How and When Did Peopie Get Here? 127

A Crash Course on Archeological Issues 129

Presentism 133

Today's Religions and Yesterday's History 134

Conclusions About Presentism 137

Chronological Ethnocentrism 138

Primitive to Civilized 139

Costs of Chronological Ethnocentrism 141

7 Why Did Europe Win? 150

The Important Questions 150

Looking Around the World 151

Explaining Civilization 154

Making the Earth Round 155

Why Did Columbus Win? 158

The Columbian Exchange 161

Ideological Results of Europe's Victory 163

Cultural Diffusion and Syncretism Continue 164

8 The $24 Myth 170

Deconstructing the $24 Myth 171

A More Accurate Story 175

Functions of the Fable 176

Overt Racism? 179

Additional Considerations 182

9 Slavery 186

Relevance to the Present 186

Hold a Meta-Conversation 191

Slavery and Racism 194

Four Key Problems of Slave Life 196

Additional Problems in Teaching the History of Slavery 201

10 The Confederacy 208

Teachers Vote 209

Teaching Against the States' Rights Myth 213

Critiquing Textbooks 216

Our Confederate Landscape 219

Genesis of the Problem 221

11 The Nadir 226

Contemporary Relevance 227

Onset of the Nadir 229

Historical Causes of Antiracist Idealism 231

Historical Causes of the Nadir of Race Relations 232

Students Can Reveal the Nadir Themselves 235

During the Nadir, Whites Became White 237

End of the Nadir 242

Implications for Today 243

Afterword: Still More Ways to Teach History 247

Index 251

About the Author 272

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Loewen's book combines salt-of-the-earth wisdom with a moral imperative to create a more just society. We can start by cutting out the lies and telling kids the truth about the past. This book should be required reading for every history teacher in the land."
—Sam Wineburg, Margaret Jacks Professor of Education and (by courtesy) History, Stanford University

“As the cover indicates, textbooks are one of the barriers to genuine learning about history. Textbook publishers don't want to offend school boards. In some cases, this means that textbook writers must avoid telling the truth about historical events and historical personages…. After reading this book, I'm willing to declare myself a fan of James W. Loewen. It may be difficult to uncover historical truth in some cases, but I applaud Loewen for prioritizing it and showing the importance of historical truth for all of us.”
—Shomeret: The Masked Reviewer

Praise for the First Edition!

“Should be in the hands of every history teacher in the country.”
— Howard Zinn

“In the sequel to his bestseller, Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen has crafted a critique of how history is being taught in public education that should be in the hands of every practicing and pre-service social studies teacher in the United States.”
—The History Teacher

"Loewen challenges us to critically reflect on the essence of what social studies and history education is and what social studies and history educators do. Doing so can only improve the experiences our students have."
—The Social Studies

"The author's recommendations on how to teach touchy topics to diverse classes are exceptional. His counsel on defining nationalism and ethnocentrism for young people is expert too. All along, the reader is not only reintroduced to critical knowledge that may have been forgotten as a result of time spent within an unproductive educational system, but is also sure to find new and transformative information. Even the trained professional must be reminded of what once was. This book does that and more."
—The Journal of Negro Education

Editorial Reviews

"The revised edition of Loewen’s book builds upon the first edition by applying these principles to contemporary circumstances. For example, a new chapter addresses post-truth politics and the Trump presidency. This makes Loewen’s work more valuable than ever for students, educators, and communities." —Teachers College Record

“In the sequel to his bestseller, Lies My Teacher Told Me, James Loewen has crafted a critique of how history is being taught in public education that should be in the hands of every practicing and pre-service social studies teacher in the United States.”

—The History Teacher (from the first edition)

"Loewen challenges us to critically reflect on the essence of what social studies and history education is and what social studies and history educators do. Doing so can only improve the experiences our students have."

—The Social Studies (from the first edition)

"The author's recommendations on how to teach touchy topics to diverse classes are exceptional. His counsel on defining nationalism and ethnocentrism for young people is expert too. All along, the reader is not only reintroduced to critical knowledge that may have been forgotten as a result of time spent within an unproductive educational system, but is also sure to find new and transformative information. Even the trained professional must be reminded of what once was. This book does that and more."

—The Journal of Negro Education (from the first edition)

“As the cover indicates, textbooks are one of the barriers to genuine learning about history. Textbook publishers don't want to offend school boards. In some cases, this means that textbook writers must avoid telling the truth about historical events and historical personages…. After reading this book, I'm willing to declare myself a fan of James W. Loewen. It may be difficult to uncover historical truth in some cases, but I applaud Loewen for prioritizing it and showing the importance of historical truth for all of us.”

—Shomeret: The Masked Reviewer

From the Publisher