"Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong,"James Loewen

Alan: The following "Footnote" is part of an essay titled, "Bread and Circuses - The Role of Television and Other "Screen" Pastimes," which can be accessed at http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2012/02/following-essay-was-written-c.html

Footnote 1  

          The following (annotated) passage is excerpted from James W. Loewen's fine volume, "Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong." (The New Press, NYC, 1995) Mr. Loewen is professor of sociology at the University of Vermont.

          "Although American History textbook writers include more social history than they used to, they still regard the actions and words of the state as incomparably more important than what the American people were doing, listening to, sleeping in, living through, or thinking about. Particularly for the centuries before the Woodrow Wilson administration, this stress on the state is inappropriate, because the federal executive was not nearly as important then as now.

`          What story do textbooks tell about our government? First, they imply that the state we live in today is the state created in 1789. Textbook authors overlook the possibility that the balance of powers set forth in the Constitution -- granting some power to each branch of the federal government, some to the states, and reserving some for individuals -- has been decisively altered over the last 200 years. The federal government they picture is still the people's servant, manageable and tractable. Paradoxically, textbooks then underplay the role of nongovernmental institutions or private citizens in bringing about improvements in the environment, race relations, education, and other social issues. In short, textbook authors portray a heroic state, and, like their other heroes, this one is pretty much without blemishes. Such an approach converts textbooks into anticitizenship manuals --- handbooks for acquiescence....

          This view holds that we Americans abandoned our revolutionary ideology long ago, if indeed we ever held one, and now typically act to repress the legitimate attempts at self-determination of other nations and peoples....

          High school American history textbooks do not, of course, adopt or even hint at "the American century" (in which) the most powerful nation on earth has typically acted to maintain its hegemony.

          ...Omit(ting) the realpolitik approach, they take a strikingly different tack. They see our policies as part of a morality play in which the United States typically acts on behalf of human rights, democracy, and "the American way." When Americans have done wrong, according to this view, it has been because others misunderstood us, or perhaps because we misunderstood the situation. But always our motives were good. This approach might be called the "international good guy" view.

          In Frances FitzGerald's phrase, textbooks present the United States as "a kind of Salvation Army to the rest of the world." In so doing, they echo the nation leaders like to present to its citizens: the supremely moral, disinterested peacekeeper, the supremely responsible world citizen.... Since at least the 1920s, textbook authors have claimed that the United States is more generous than any other nation in the world in providing foreign aid. The myth was untrue then ; it is untrue now. Today at least a dozen European and Arab nations devote much larger proportions of their gross domestic product or total governmental expenditures to foreign aid than does the United States.

          (Of the 12 American history textbooks I analyzed in writing this book) all but one contain at least a paragraph on the Peace Corps. The tone of these treatments is adoring... As a shaper of history, however, the Peace Corps has been insignificant. It does not disparage this fine institution to admit that its main impact has been on the intellectual development of its own volunteers.

         More important and often less affable American exports are our multinational corporations.... As multinational corporations such as Exxon and Mitsubishi come to have budgets larger than those of most government, national economies are becoming obsolete. Robert Reich, secretary of labor in the Clinton administration, has pointed out, "The very idea of an American economy is becoming meaningless, as are the notions of an American corporation, American capital, American products, and American technology." Multinationals may represent a threat to national autonomy, affecting not only small nations but also the United States.

         When Americans try to think through the issues raised by the complex interweaving of our economic and political interests, they will not be helped by what they learned in their American history courses. History textbooks do not even mention multinationals. The topic doesn't fit their "international good guy" approach. Only one high school textbook mentions "multinationals" in its index, and its treatment consists of a single sentence: "These investments (in Europe after W.W.I) led to the development of multinational corporations --- large companies with interest in several countries." Even this lone statement is inaccurate: European multinationals date back centuries, and American multinationals have played an important role in hour history since at least 1900. One multinational alone, International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), which took the lead in prompting our government to destabilize the socialist government of Salvador Allende, had more impact on Chile than all the Peace Corps workers America ever sent there. The same might be said of Union Carbide in India and United Fruit in Guatemala or Exxon in Angola.

          (And when the United States does intervene,) our intervention (is always represented as) humanitarian.

          (We) could use a shot of the realism supplied by former Marine Corps General Smedley D. Butler, whose 1931 statement has become famous: "I helped make Mexico safe for American oil interest in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers.... I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints." (Which recalls Al Capone's own advice: "You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.")

          (James Loewen goes on to investigate the treatment of 6 significant post-War events as represented in 12 high school textbooks. The events - and the curricular role they play - are as follows: 1.) American assistance to the shah's faction in Iran in deposing Prime Minister Mussadegh - and returning the shah to the throne in 1953 - is mentioned in one of twelve texts; 2.) America's role in bringing down the elected government of Guatemala in 1954 is mentioned in one of twelve texts; 3.) America's rigging of the 1957 election in Lebanon, which entrenched the (minority) Christians as the chief political party thus unleashing the Muslim revolt and civil war the next year was mentioned in none of the twelve texts; 4.) American involvement in the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba of Zaire (and subsequent installation of Mobutu) is mentioned in one of twelve textbooks; 5.) our repeated attempts to murder Premier Fidel Castro of Cuba and bring down his government by terror and sabotage is mentioned in none of the twelve textbooks, and 6.) America's role in bringing down the elected government of Chile in 1973 is mentioned in 3 of twelve textbooks. (According to one's method of calculating the ongoing fallout of these 6 episodes, 500,000 to 1,000,000 people have already been killed as a result of these 6 interventions --- a mini-holocaust still-in-progress. Yet these -- and other -- acts of U.S.-sponsored terrorism go unmentioned -- or, receive summary justification -- in high school history textbooks. Keep in mind that these textbooks comprise the deepest insight into American political history ever supplied to 85% of the population. With antecedents like these, the nation will never transcend the low-grade fascism and swashbuckling jingoism that is the heart of American politics.)

          (In his description of lies routinely told by U.S. government officials to justify America's covert belligerence world-world, Loewen points to a statement by John Kennedy's Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, who, on the very day of the 1961 Cuban "Bay of Pigs" invasion, declared that "The American people are entitled to know whether we are intervening in Cuba or intend to do so in the future. The answer to that question is no."

          Those of us who remember the Gary Powers' U-2 spying incident, might recall that Eisenhower's vigorous denial of that episode represented the tip of an iceberg: during the 1950s, thirty one (31) U.S. spy flights had been downed over the Soviet Union, carrying 170 men with them. "For decades our government lied to the families of the lost men and never made substantial representation to the USSR to get them back."

          Later, the United States secretly bombed Laos -- and trumped up the Tonkin Bay incident -- to escalate the Viet Nam "conflict" into the full-fledged horror it became.

          "Over and over, presidents have chosen not to risk their popularity by waging the campaign required to persuade Americans to support their secret military policies (even though) our Constitution provides that Congress must declare war....

          To the extent that their understanding of the government comes from their American history courses, students will be shocked by these events and unprepared to think about them.

          'Our country... may she always be in the right," toasted Stephen Decatur in 1816, 'but our country right or wrong!' Educators and textbook authors seem to want to inculcate the next generation into blind allegiance to our country. Going a step beyond Decatur, textbook analyses fail to assess our actions abroad according to either a standard of right and wrong or realpolitik. Instead, textbooks merely assume that the government tried to do the right thing. Citizens who embrace the textbook view would presumably support any intervention, armed or otherwise, and any policy, protective of our legitimate national interests or not, because they would be persuaded that all our policies and interventions are on behalf of humanitarian aims."

          (Among a wealth of other topics, Loewen discusses the details of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI administration, during which public figures - from Kennedy to King - were victims of systematic extortion. Hoover's contempt for Afro-Americans in general -- and Martin Luther King Jr. in particular -- is a sordid chronicle deserving careful attention.)

History Is Written By The Victors

          "Not only do textbooks fail to blame the federal government for its opposition to the civil rights movement, many actually credit the government, almost single-handedly, for the advances made during the period. In so doing, textbooks follow what we might call the Hollywood approach to civil rights... No book educates students about the dynamics that in a democracy should characterize the interrelationship between the people and their government. Thus no book tells how citizens can and in fact have forced the government to respond to them....

          Many teachers don't help; a study of twelve randomly selected teachers of 12th grade American government courses found that about the only way teachers suggested that individuals could influence local or national governments was through voting.

          Textbook authors seem to believe that Americans can be loyal to their government only so long as they believe it has never done anything bad. Textbooks therefore present a U.S. government that deserves students' allegiance, not their criticism....

         By downplaying covert and illegal acts by the government, textbook authors narcotize students from thinking about such issues as the increasing dominance of the executive branch. By taking the government's side, textbooks encourage students to conclude that criticism is incompatible with citizenship. And by presenting government actions in a vacuum, rather than as responses to such institutions as multinational corporations and civil rights organizations, textbooks mystify the creative tension between the people and their leaders. All this encourages students to throw up their hands in the belief that the government determines everything anyway, so why bother, especially if its actions are usually so benign. Thus our American history textbooks minimize the potential power of the people and, despite their best patriotic efforts, take a stance that is overtly antidemocratic."

          It is difficult to lay Loewen aside. Rarely do educational researchers render such tenacious analysis of one particular structure by which Public Instruction hobbles the citizenry. In his chapter "Down the Memory Hole: The Disappearance of the Recent Past", one glimpses the depth of America's "official" denial of such landmark events as the Viet Nam War.

          Recent poles reveal that only 3% of American high school graduates believe Viet Nam received even summary treatment.

          Despite the fact that "the U.S. dropped three times as many explosives as it dropped in all theaters of World War II, even including our nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," not one textbook shows any damage done by U.S. forces. However, these same texts always include photos of the paltry physical damage perpetrated by the Viet Cong.

          Only one of the twelve textbooks included a single photo from that era's gallery of decisive images: a Buddhist monk immolating himself; a naked girl running down Highway 1 to escape a napalm attack; the casual "brain blasting" of a suspected Viet Cong sympathizer by South Viet Nam's national police chief; the bodies of women, old men and children stacked at My Lai.

          Concerning the U.S. military policy of targeting civilians, General William C. Westmoreland offered this fatuous defense: 'It does deprive the enemy of the population, doesn't it?"

          In 1971, Senator John Kerry - a Viet Nam war vet, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that American troops had "personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, poisoned food stocks and generally ravaged the countryside of South Viet Nam. All this was in addition to the normal ravage of war.'.... Yet no textbook uses any photograph of any wrongdoing by an American. Indeed, no book includes any photograph of any destruction - even of legitimate targets -caused by our side."

          My last reference to Loewen's "Lies my Teacher Taught Me" concerns his analysis of "Progress" --- the secular credo that typically undergirds American abuse of power --- whether in foreign policy, or in the historic elimination of native peoples, or the industrial degradation of the environment.

          Loewen's chapter on the philosophical underpinnings of "progress" is entitled "Progress is Our Most Important Product." (Many recall that this phrase was General Electric's motto, but few remember that Fortune magazine declared General Electric "one of the ten worst corporate environmental offenders.")

          "Perhaps textbook authors do not question the notion that bigger is better because the idea of progress conforms with the way Americans like to think about education: ameliorative, leading step by step to opportunity for individuals and progress for the whole society. The ideology of progress also provides hope for the future. Certainly most Americans want to believe that their society has been, on balance, a boon and not a curse to mankind and to the planet. History textbooks go even further to imply that simply by participating in society, Americans contribute to a  nation that is constantly progressing and remains the hope of the world....

          Faith in progress has played various functions in society and in American history textbooks. The faith has promoted the status quo in the most literal sense, for it proclaims that to progress we must simply do more of the same. This belief (in "the inevitability of progress" which was vehemently attacked by G. K. Chesterton at the turn of the century) has been particularly useful to the upper class, because Americans could be persuaded to ignore the injustice of social class if they thought the economic pie kept getting bigger for all. The idea of progress also fits in with Social Darwinism, which implies that the lower class is lower owing to its own fault. Progress as an ideology (and as an article of faith) has been intrinsically antirevolutionary: because things are getting better all the time, everyone should believe in the system. Portraying America so optimistically also helps textbooks withstand attacks by ultrapatriotic critics in Texas and other textbook adoption states....

          'Anyone having the slightest familiarity with the physics of heat, energy, and matter,' wrote E. J. Mishan in 1977, 'will realize that, in terms of historical time, the end of economic growth, as we currently experience it, cannot be that far off.' This is largely because of the awesome power of compound interest. Economic growth at three percent, a conventional standard, means that the economy doubles every quarter-century, typically doubling society's use of raw materials, expenditures of energy, and generation of waste.

          The energy crises of 1973 and 1979 pointed to the difficulty that capitalism, a marvelous system of production, was never designed to accommodate shortage. For demand to exceed supply is supposed to be good for capitalism, leading to increased production and often to lower costs. Oil, however, is not really produced but extracted....

          Because the economy has become global, the "commons" (i.e., the life-sustaining capacity of shared environments) now encompasses the entire planet....

          Quantitatively, the average U.S. citizen consumes the same resources as ten average world citizens or 25 residents of India. Our continued economic development coexists in some tension with a corollary of the archetype of progress: the notion that America's cause is the cause of all humankind. Thus our economic leadership is very different from our political leadership. Politically, we can hope other nations will put in place our forms of democracy and respect for civil liberties. Economically, we can only hope other nations will never achieve our standard of living, for if they did, the earth would become a desert. Economically, we are the bane, not the hope of the world. Since the planet is finite, as we expand our economy we make it less likely that less developed nations can expand theirs....

          David Donald characterizes the "incurable optimism" of American history courses as "not merely irrelevant but dangerous." In this sense, our environmental crisis is an educational problem to which American history courses contribute."

                                                                                                       ***

          I would warn optimists that the plight of America's public school system can not be remedied by "tinkering" reform.

          As a System, public instruction requires hierarchical management methods that are inimical to informed democratic consent. The (military/industrial/educational) System can only survive by perpetuating the Official Story, a quietly bureaucratic agenda that systematically stultifies the populace so that pocketbook concerns divert attention from the sort of scrutiny needed to fashion an interactive government independent of multi-national corporate domination.

          As long as our children are imbued with a "smiley faced" assessment of "America the Beautiful," we will never perceive -- much less act on the knowledge -- that "trickle down" economics is, from the rapidly globalizing vantage of most human beings, the equivalent of being "trickled upon."