No. It's not about my teacher. It's the title of a book written by a retired professor of sociology, James Loewen. In his own words:
A sociologist who spent two years at the Smithsonian surveying twelve leading high school textbooks of American history only to find an embarrassing blend of bland optimism, blind nationalism, and plain misinformation, weighing in at an average of 888 pages and almost five pounds.
So, what's the point about a sociologist researching history books? Isn't that the job of historians? Well, it depends on how you look at history. If you view history the way of C. Wright Mills (one of my favorite sociologists), it's completely relevant. And not only relevant, but also necessary. It is the necessity of Sociological Imagination.
Sociological Imagination is one of the important concepts that Mills introduced to the realm of sociology in a book by the same title. Look here for excerpts of his book. In a nutshell, we don't live in a vacuum. Our life is affected by the conditions of the society we live in. Quoting Mills:
The facts of contemporary history are also facts about the success and the failure of individual men and women. When a society is industrialized, a peasant becomes a worker; a feudal lord is liquidated or becomes a businessman. When classes rise or fall, a man is employed or unemployed; when the rate of investment goes up or down, a man takes new heart or goes broke. When wars happen, an insurance salesman becomes a rocket launcher; a store clerk, a radar man; a wife lives alone; a child grows up without a father. Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both.
The well-being they enjoy, they do not usually impute to the big ups and downs of the societies in which they live. Seldom aware of the intricate connection between the patterns of their own lives and the course of world history, ordinary men do not usually know what this connection means for the kinds of men they are becoming and for the kinds of history-making in which they might take part. They do not possess the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay of man and society, of biography and history, of self and world.
So, when a sociologist like Loewen focuses on history books, he must have been inspired by such a necessity and such a quality of mind. We cannot understand our own identity, without understanding the processes through which it has been shaped. One of the institutions that play a big role in this complicated process of identity formation is our education system. And an important part of it all is history education.
His intention is not to make Americans feel guilty or ashamed about their history. Such feelings wouldn't help correct anything. To have a reasonable understanding of who we are and how we look at our life and our world, we should acquire an informed insight into our history and culture. If we have a good knowledge of our past (both positive and negative aspects) we can live our present well and we will be able to build a better future.
With this goal in mind, Loewen sets to debunk the hype and myths surrounding American history. One of his major concerns is the process of heroification. The textbooks present historical figures in idealized terms without flaws, thus making them impossible for students to identify with.
Well, at least if those students try. And if they do, they wouldn't be able to connect to those blemish-free statues on the pedestals of their history. And when they get to know even some bit of truth, they feel frustrated and disillusioned. And this will lead to extreme apologeticism. People switch from false pride and blind patriotism to apathy toward their history and culture altogether. In my discussion sections for Introduction to Sociology, I've received such emotional reactions while discussing Loewen's book.
Although I'm not an American, I'm quite familiar with such myths from my early childhood years of reading books on American history (the kind that Loewen tries to discredit). And I have to confess that as a kid, I believed a lot of them, as I had no alternative sources other than those books translated and published over those years of pro-American Iran. My independent studies at later stages of my life, debunked a lot of the hype.
It doesn't mean that I no longer admire Americans. Now, my admiration for this nation is based on realistic grounds and what they actually are rather than ludicrous fairy tales that overwhelm American history books (and entertainment industry).
Still, reading something like "pilgrims invited Indians to the first Thanksgiving and offered them foods that they had not ever seen in their life", sounds too much even for my saturated threshold for tolerating stupidity. Reading more nonsense of this sort that I had not seen even in my childhood American history books, gave me a better understanding of why American kids think about themselves (and the world) the way they do and how they build on the education they have received at school.
And it strikes me when I hear people (even educated ones) view Indians as a bunch of hunter-gatherers wielding their tomahawks making unintelligible noise while running after buffaloes. And when I talk about rich Indian culture and specifically their stunningly nice poems, people give me a puzzled look: huh? Indians? poems?
To be more precise, those pilgrims wouldn't have survived the first winter of New England if it were not for the generous selfless help of those savage uncivilized Indians (a fact that even those fairy-tale history books are beginning to admit). And by help, I mean something more than giving them handouts to prevent them from digging graves and resorting to cannibalism (as had happened to other settlers) or turning a blind eye when those pious pilgrims borrowed food from their homes or farms (or graves) in their absence. Indians taught pilgrims how to cultivate corn and other local vegetables and where to find fish and other prey.
In our discussion session, we were discussing myths surrounding the first Thanksgiving and the new understanding acquired by reading Lies, chapter 3. Some of the reactions I got from some students in their quizzes were amazing: feeling ashamed about Thanksgiving altogether, never feeling like celebrating it again or going as far as to attribute all the misery of Indians to pilgrims.
To be fair, pilgrims were just one cog in the wheel and Indian problems began when Christopher Columbus (another superhero shrouded in myths, discussed in chapter 2) discovered the land they had inhabited for thousands of years. And it continued with wave after wave of settlers who came to build a city on the hill amid the wilderness of Indians' ancestral land and bringing with them all sort of disease (to which poor Indians had no immunity) and thereby, eradicating over 90% of Indian population over the course of early centuries of the history of this New World.
What I found the most outrageous while reading chapter 3, was a letter from King James (yeah, the same guy who sponsored the 1611 Bible), attributing the plague that wiped out a big part of Indians to God. According to him, this plague was a God-sent blessing that would clear the way for settlement. And what plague and all sort of God-sent diseases (that settlers brought with them as a souvenir from Europe) failed to do, Europeans completed by butchering the savage (terrorists, in our modern time terminology) who began to fight back the continued encroachment on their ancestral land.
Yet, this is the less harmful part of the story.
If those students don't even try to connect to their heroes, they'll get stuck with compound ignorance. They remain ignorant about their culture and history and trivially, about those of other nations. And they remain ignorant about their ignorance. Compound ignorance is a degenerative process that as its first and foremost offshoot produces ethnocentrism. You have such a high opinion about your culture (without even knowing exactly what it is and why) that at best, don't care about other cultures and at its worst, find other cultures to be inferior compared to yours.
False perceptions about American heritage lead to an ethnocentric mentality which is conducive to American exceptionalism: the US as an extraordinary and superior nation has a special responsibility, or if you blend some religious fanaticism, a mandate to play a special role in human history. People fall prey to the ignorant perception that American way of life is the greatest and probably, the only way of life. And such a responsibility or mandate requires Americans to teach others how to live. If they learn it the easy way, that's fine. If they don't, they should be taught the hard way.
Naivety of such an attitude may sound dumbfounding to the rest of the world (that's a common way of referring to countries who are not on the Northern part of this continent). But people who suffer from compound ignorance don't even think about the real problem. If other people get offended by the arrogance of American exceptionalism, it's their problem. They feel envious about American way of life and are simply incapable of being as great as we are, and hence resent our freedom, values , etc.
Preposterous as it may sound, that was the recurring theme I would read after 911 everywhere (liberal or conservative) to explain the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism. Liberals were savvy enough to move on and look for a solution: eradicating poverty and improving education in third world countries. Still, as their solution is based on a simplistic analysis about the root-cause of the problem, it's unlikely to produce the result they seek. Yet, they were far better than their neocon counterparts, who failing to use their gray-cells properly, have continued to assert their stupid analysis and have stayed the course of teaching the world, the hard way.
Such analyses fail to grasp the simple fact that taking false pride in what you perceive to be the absolute truth about your glorious heritage could be mutated in other parts of the world as well. And the way to fight the malignant spread of one brand of exceptionalism (manifested in turning civilian airplanes into missiles) is not the regeneration of what originally led to such a metastatic formation. The reasonable approach is to cure it at home at its earlier stages. That's what books like Lies My Teacher Told Me might achieve.
His intention is not to make Americans feel guilty or ashamed about their history. Such feelings wouldn't help correct anything. To have a reasonable understanding of who we are and how we look at our life and our world, we should acquire an informed insight into our history and culture. If we have a good knowledge of our past (both positive and negative aspects) we can live our present well and we will be able to build a better future.
With this goal in mind, Loewen sets to debunk the hype and myths surrounding American history. One of his major concerns is the process of heroification. The textbooks present historical figures in idealized terms without flaws, thus making them impossible for students to identify with.
Well, at least if those students try. And if they do, they wouldn't be able to connect to those blemish-free statues on the pedestals of their history. And when they get to know even some bit of truth, they feel frustrated and disillusioned. And this will lead to extreme apologeticism. People switch from false pride and blind patriotism to apathy toward their history and culture altogether. In my discussion sections for Introduction to Sociology, I've received such emotional reactions while discussing Loewen's book.
Although I'm not an American, I'm quite familiar with such myths from my early childhood years of reading books on American history (the kind that Loewen tries to discredit). And I have to confess that as a kid, I believed a lot of them, as I had no alternative sources other than those books translated and published over those years of pro-American Iran. My independent studies at later stages of my life, debunked a lot of the hype.
It doesn't mean that I no longer admire Americans. Now, my admiration for this nation is based on realistic grounds and what they actually are rather than ludicrous fairy tales that overwhelm American history books (and entertainment industry).
Still, reading something like "pilgrims invited Indians to the first Thanksgiving and offered them foods that they had not ever seen in their life", sounds too much even for my saturated threshold for tolerating stupidity. Reading more nonsense of this sort that I had not seen even in my childhood American history books, gave me a better understanding of why American kids think about themselves (and the world) the way they do and how they build on the education they have received at school.
And it strikes me when I hear people (even educated ones) view Indians as a bunch of hunter-gatherers wielding their tomahawks making unintelligible noise while running after buffaloes. And when I talk about rich Indian culture and specifically their stunningly nice poems, people give me a puzzled look: huh? Indians? poems?
To be more precise, those pilgrims wouldn't have survived the first winter of New England if it were not for the generous selfless help of those savage uncivilized Indians (a fact that even those fairy-tale history books are beginning to admit). And by help, I mean something more than giving them handouts to prevent them from digging graves and resorting to cannibalism (as had happened to other settlers) or turning a blind eye when those pious pilgrims borrowed food from their homes or farms (or graves) in their absence. Indians taught pilgrims how to cultivate corn and other local vegetables and where to find fish and other prey.
In our discussion session, we were discussing myths surrounding the first Thanksgiving and the new understanding acquired by reading Lies, chapter 3. Some of the reactions I got from some students in their quizzes were amazing: feeling ashamed about Thanksgiving altogether, never feeling like celebrating it again or going as far as to attribute all the misery of Indians to pilgrims.
To be fair, pilgrims were just one cog in the wheel and Indian problems began when Christopher Columbus (another superhero shrouded in myths, discussed in chapter 2) discovered the land they had inhabited for thousands of years. And it continued with wave after wave of settlers who came to build a city on the hill amid the wilderness of Indians' ancestral land and bringing with them all sort of disease (to which poor Indians had no immunity) and thereby, eradicating over 90% of Indian population over the course of early centuries of the history of this New World.
What I found the most outrageous while reading chapter 3, was a letter from King James (yeah, the same guy who sponsored the 1611 Bible), attributing the plague that wiped out a big part of Indians to God. According to him, this plague was a God-sent blessing that would clear the way for settlement. And what plague and all sort of God-sent diseases (that settlers brought with them as a souvenir from Europe) failed to do, Europeans completed by butchering the savage (terrorists, in our modern time terminology) who began to fight back the continued encroachment on their ancestral land.
Yet, this is the less harmful part of the story.
If those students don't even try to connect to their heroes, they'll get stuck with compound ignorance. They remain ignorant about their culture and history and trivially, about those of other nations. And they remain ignorant about their ignorance. Compound ignorance is a degenerative process that as its first and foremost offshoot produces ethnocentrism. You have such a high opinion about your culture (without even knowing exactly what it is and why) that at best, don't care about other cultures and at its worst, find other cultures to be inferior compared to yours.
False perceptions about American heritage lead to an ethnocentric mentality which is conducive to American exceptionalism: the US as an extraordinary and superior nation has a special responsibility, or if you blend some religious fanaticism, a mandate to play a special role in human history. People fall prey to the ignorant perception that American way of life is the greatest and probably, the only way of life. And such a responsibility or mandate requires Americans to teach others how to live. If they learn it the easy way, that's fine. If they don't, they should be taught the hard way.
Naivety of such an attitude may sound dumbfounding to the rest of the world (that's a common way of referring to countries who are not on the Northern part of this continent). But people who suffer from compound ignorance don't even think about the real problem. If other people get offended by the arrogance of American exceptionalism, it's their problem. They feel envious about American way of life and are simply incapable of being as great as we are, and hence resent our freedom, values , etc.
Preposterous as it may sound, that was the recurring theme I would read after 911 everywhere (liberal or conservative) to explain the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism. Liberals were savvy enough to move on and look for a solution: eradicating poverty and improving education in third world countries. Still, as their solution is based on a simplistic analysis about the root-cause of the problem, it's unlikely to produce the result they seek. Yet, they were far better than their neocon counterparts, who failing to use their gray-cells properly, have continued to assert their stupid analysis and have stayed the course of teaching the world, the hard way.
Such analyses fail to grasp the simple fact that taking false pride in what you perceive to be the absolute truth about your glorious heritage could be mutated in other parts of the world as well. And the way to fight the malignant spread of one brand of exceptionalism (manifested in turning civilian airplanes into missiles) is not the regeneration of what originally led to such a metastatic formation. The reasonable approach is to cure it at home at its earlier stages. That's what books like Lies My Teacher Told Me might achieve.
2 comments:
Would you say your own education in Iran was free of this phenomena? If so, why? If not, in what ways?
Yes and no.
We have a very long history with each epoch having its own characteristics. It depends on which epoch you're looking at and the timeframe when the history of that epoch is taught. And I'm not talking merely about pre-Islam or post-Islam era; that's oversimplification of Iranian history.
I've seen history books before and after 1979 revolution. Different epochs are treated differently throughout the same history book. Even when you study pre-Islam epochs in pre-revolution Iran or study post-Islam epochs in post-revolution Iran.
Unlike American textbooks, you don't see an all-glorious history in any Iranian textbook. Authors might choose to skip some historical facts, but when some unpleasant things are mentioned, you don't get a view that "we were right no matter what". That's different from American books where even the most heinous crimes like nuking hundreds of thousands of civilians is justified because it saved more lives. Well, American lives mostly.
Still, you would see some similarities between Iranian and American historical perspectives. And that's conducive to one of the things Iran and the US have in common: exceptionalism. Although its nature is different in each country.
Iranian exceptionalism is primarily based on the length of their civilization with some emphasis on chosen mythical superheroes in the epochs they favor; that of Americans is based on building a nation from scratch over a short time in a utopian/legendary/biblical way where white people are always superior and right.
Another similarity that I find in both American and Iranian history books over past decade is that in both countries they've started to demythify the books to make them sound more realistic. That's a good development
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