In Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, James Loewen, writer and sociology professor, details the way in which high school curriculums are distorting reality. He focuses heavily on the Pilgrims and the first European settlers of America. He gives copious details about the factual history of Plymouth Rock and compares it to the innocuous fables of the history textbooks. The consolidated, America-can-do-no-wrong revisions of Social Study curriculums give students an incomplete and misinformed historical perspective. To say that the American history textbooks are misrepresentative would be a gross understatement. In an attempt to promote unquestioning nationalism, history books have robbed students of the most valuable aspect of learning about America’s past, the means to not repeat the folly of our progenitors. Loewen presents his thesis with effective elegance: “Whether one deems our present society wondrous or awful or both, history reveals how we arrived at this point. Understanding …show more content…
He argues that if the actual story were told, it would be a much more intriguing epic, containing the suspenseful storytelling that grips an audience. In the true history of Thanksgiving, he shows the reader how compelling the narrative becomes with all the facts. Twists and turns are what keep the reader engaged and truth is not only stranger than fiction, it has a better narrative. He contends that movies based on historical themes, like Dances with Wolves, grip students and are closer to historical fact than the textbooks. This connects his intro and ties it into an alternate narrative about Thanksgiving that makes the reader question what they think they