Fake news did not begin with Donald Trump. Trump and his team appear to be taking the distortion of facts to a new level, but it is the culmination of years of immersing our citizenry in a historical perspective filled with lies.
Our students experience this the moment they start to learn about American history.
I first became aware of this when I examined the textbook I was given when I started teaching American history in high school. Fresh out of a graduate program in American history, I was astounded by the textbook distortions.
Investigating further, I discovered that many textbook publishers alter facts if the facts could lead to rejection of the textbook in some parts of the country.
One noted case was a McGraw-Hill textbook used in Texas that stated that we brought “workers” from Africa to help Southern plantation owners. This is still a problem with many American history textbooks and leads many effective history teachers to reject a text and instead create their own “book” from varied sources.
The challenge of teaching American history that exposes truths is a great one. I remember finding essays to help my students understand the Mexican War from both Mexican and U.S. perspectives. I also remember having an unpleasant conversation with a parent who objected to my including multiple U.S. and Vietnamese perspectives in my unit about the Vietnam War.
If I was teaching today I’d capitalize on the popularity of the show “Hamilton” and use it as a springboard to discuss our myths about both Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson, especially since the topic of our founding fathers and slavery is a very important one.
Returning from a recent trip to Quebec, I also realized that our schools teach little Canadian or Mexican history. I also recognized that indigenous people in Canada were treated differently than in the U.S., beginning with the explorer Samuel de Champlain.
Are there any American history texts that provide this information? It would also be interesting to have students contrast Champlain’s and Christopher Columbus’ treatment of indigenous people.
Two books helped me and should be consulted by all American history teachers. Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the U.S.” has a liberal bias, but does an excellent job of debunking many myths. “Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong,” by James W. Loewen, dispassionately examines what amount to lies our children are taught about our history.
These books provide important correctives to most of our texts.
A recent national best-seller that also addresses this is Kurt Anderson’s “Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: a 500-Year History.” Anderson traces the roots of our creating fake truths about what is taking place in our country, going all the way back to the Puritans. The book has been widely praised by respected journalists like Tom Brokaw and Lawrence O’Donnell, who described it as the most important book he’s read this year.
An article in the Oct. 6 Independent Journal provided a wonderful example of a teacher addressing these myths effectively in a history class at the Hamilton School in Novato.
There are other good history teachers who do the same.
This exposition of our real history contrasted with myths about our history is not anti-American. There are wonderful truths about our country that may come into sharper focus if we cut away the lies and myths.
James Baldwin wrote: “American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.”
We have an obligation to teach our students to carefully examine all the facts and varied perspectives of historians. This can only help contribute to far greater skepticism and critical thinking when being bombarded with misinformation and fantasies about what is happening right now.
Mark Phillips of Woodacre is a professor emeritus of education at San Francisco State University. He is a regular contributor to Marin Voice.
