American History: Not Interesting for High School Student

Through appear the course of the record, Loewen analyzes specific topics in Ameri john history to examine their discourse by the history books being used in American classrooms. Topics cleft include Christopher Columbus, Thanksgiving, John Brown and the Civil War, and Abraham Lincoln's views on slavery. whizz of Loewen's main conclusions is that American history textbooks overwhelmingly focus on the exploits of wealthy white Americans, thereby trivializing the accomplishments of minorities in our rural area's history and marginalizing minority students in the classroom. Another of Loewen's main criticisms is that American history texts expel conflict and omit any inconvenient facts that may shine negatively on our national character. An example of this is the standard treatment of Helen Keller, which focuses on her struggle to overcome her disabilities while completely ignoring the historic fact that she was a radical socialist activist (Loewen, 20).

The book concludes with an analysis of the mechanisms by which school districts choose their textbooks. Loewen concludes that, panoramad with affirm curriculum constraints and micromanaging oversight from school administrators, teachers and history textbook authors consistently tend to remove controversy from their treatment of historically authoritative events and people. This whitewashing (both figura

tive as well as literal in some cases) of the history that is presented to American naughty school students results in history classes losing the one thing that can make it interesting for students: a proper analysis of the controversies that furnish our nation's past.

In effect, Loewen argues that by providing a proper treatment of the controversies and missteps that enclose our nation's past, American high school students would be better equipped to understand and confront the problems of racism, poverty, crime and other inequalities that they must face in their day-to-day existence.

The strength of Loewen's analysis, I believe, are the myriad historical events that he dissects. In almost both historical circumstance, Loewen shows how history textbooks downplay conflict among our nation's leaders and focus on the optimistic message that we are a great nation and that we can accomplish anything we set our minds to. Indeed, by avoiding historical conflicts textbooks consume the very thing that could draw students in. Our culture is a conflicted one, and every night on the newscast we see conflict play out in front of our eyes. History textbooks must do a better job of relating what happened three hundred years agone to what is happening today; by focusing on the disagreements, conflicts, and foul things that happened tex
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