The main thesis of Loewen's book is that American history
has been taught in a way that glosses over the bad parts of what Americans have done.
Loewen argues that American history has been meant not to really teach us about what
happened but rather to instill in us the idea that our country is always
good.
To Loewen, typical history texts tend to try to
ignore the bad parts of US history. They try to tell us that America has always done
the right thing. As Loewen says in the illinois.edu link
below,
They
portray history as a simple-minded morality
play.
In that morality play,
the US is always on the side of good and we can admire essentially everything about our
history.
Loewen is also making a number of other points
about the way history is taught and the quality (or lack thereof) of history texts, but
his main thesis is that history is made into a simple tale that is meant to show how
great the US is.
No comments:
Post a Comment