Teaching what really happened : how to avoid the tyranny of textbooks and get students excited about doing history / James W. Loewen.

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Bibliographic Details
Uniform Title:Multicultural education series (New York, N.Y.)
Main Author: Loewen, James W. (Author)
Language:English
Published: New York : Teachers College Press, [2018]
Edition:Second edition.
Series:Multicultural education series (New York, N.Y.)
Subjects:
United States > History > Textbooks.
United States > History > Study and teaching.
United States > Historiography.
Historiography.
Study skills.
Textbooks.
United States.
History.
Genre:
Textbooks.
History.
Physical Description:xvi, 272 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.
Format: Book
Contents:
  • Introduction : history as weapon
  • A lesson from Mississippi
  • A lesson from Vermont
  • Why history is important to students
  • Why history is important to society
  • 1. The tyranny of coverage:
  • Forests, trees, and twigs
  • Winnowing trees
  • Deep thinking
  • Relevance to the present
  • Skills
  • Getting the principal on board
  • Coping with reasons to teach "as usual"
  • You are not alone
  • Brining students along
  • 2. Expecting excellence:
  • Student characteristics affect teacher expectations
  • "Standardized" tests affect teacher expectations
  • Statistical processes cause cultural bias in "standardized" tests
  • Internalizing expectations
  • Teachers can create their own expectations
  • 3. Historiography:
  • A tale of two eras
  • The civil rights movement, cognitive dissonance, and historiography
  • Studying bad history
  • Other ways to teach historiography
  • 4. Doing history:
  • Doing history to critique history
  • Writing a paper
  • Bringing families in
  • Local history
  • Getting started
  • Final product
  • Using the product
  • 5. Truth:
  • Background of the problem
  • Separating matters of fact from matters of opinion
  • Five tests to assess credibility
  • 6. How and when do people get here?
  • A crash course on archeological issues
  • Presentism
  • Today's religions and yesterday's history
  • Conclusions about presentism
  • Chronological ethnocentrism
  • Primitive to civilized
  • Costs of chronological ethnocentrism
  • 7. Why did Europe win?
  • The important questions
  • Looking around the world
  • Explaining civilization
  • Making the Earth round
  • Why did Columbus win?
  • The Columbian exchange
  • Ideological results of Europe's victory
  • Cultural diffusion and syncretism continue
  • 8. The $24 myth:
  • Deconstructing the $24 myth
  • A more accurate story
  • Functions of the fable
  • Overt racism?
  • Additional considerations
  • 9. Slavery:
  • Relevance to the present
  • Hold a meta-conversation
  • Slavery and racism
  • Four key problems of slave life
  • Additional problems in teaching the history of slavery
  • 10. The Confederacy:
  • Teachers vote
  • Teaching against the State's Rights myth
  • Critiquing textbooks
  • Our Confederate landscape
  • Genesis of the problem
  • 11. The Nadir:
  • Contemporary relevance
  • Onset of the Nadir
  • Historical causes of antiracist idealism
  • Historical causes of the Nadir of race relations
  • Students can reveal the Nadir themselves
  • During the Nadir, whites became white
  • End of the Nadir
  • Implications for today
  • Afterword : still more ways to teach history.