Found in 6 comments on Hacker News
sillystuff · 2023-05-27 · Original thread
LMTTM is an excellent book on the subject of (poor state of) history being taught in K-12 schools in the US. I bought it for my son when he was in elementary school, and the "history" he was being taught was mostly just uncritical hero worship of famous people combined with made up bullshit to improve narrative flow.

"After surveying eighteen leading high school American history texts, he [Loewen] has concluded that not one does a decent job of making history interesting or memorable. Marred by an embarrassing combination of blind patriotism, mindless optimism, sheer misinformation, and outright lies, these books omit almost all the ambiguity, passion, conflict, and drama from our past."

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

https://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything-dp-16...

eropple · 2023-01-20 · Original thread
Sure, point me to them.

I learned a lot of wrong things in school. One could say I have spent most of my adult life unlearning them. Welcome to the club.

Consider also James Loewen's classic book, too: https://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything-dp-16...

scrapcode · 2014-11-08 · Original thread
The word "many" leads me to believe that this is the author's opinion without substance, and even with evidence at best ad populum.

I recently read "Lies My Teacher Told Me" by J. Loewen [1], and it hits on just this, being the "heroification" of American leaders. I wouldn't doubt that this is what was the popular teaching in K-12 US.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/074...

chimeracoder · 2012-12-31 · Original thread
> No independence, no civil war, nada.

To be honest, most schools that do cover those do an even worse job than not teaching anything at all.

If you're interested in filling in the gaps on your own:

http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Know-About-History-Anniversary/dp... http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/074...

bgrohman · 2012-10-01 · Original thread
1. Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, by James W. Loewen

http://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/074...

2. Clojure Programming, by Chas Emerick

http://www.amazon.com/Clojure-Programming-Chas-Emerick/dp/14...

3. Zorba the Greek, by Nikos Kazantzakis

http://www.amazon.com/Zorba-Greek-Nikos-Kazantzakis/dp/06848...

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