Blogs > Cliopatria > Teaching What Really Happened: How To Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History By James Loewen

Dec 3, 2009

Teaching What Really Happened: How To Avoid the Tyranny of Textbooks and Get Students Excited About Doing History By James Loewen


by Cliopatria


[From the publisher] In this follow-up to his landmark bestseller, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong, Loewen goes beyond the usual textbook-dominated curriculum to illuminate a wealth of intriguing, often hidden facts about America’s past. Calling for a new way to teach history, this book offers teachers specific ideas for how to get students excited about history, how to get them to DO history, and how to help them read critically. It will specifically help teachers tackle difficult but important topics like the American Indian experience, slavery, and race relations. Throughout, Loewen shows how “teaching what really happened” not only connects better with all kinds of students, it better prepares those students to be tomorrow’s citizens.

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vaughn davis bornet - 12/5/2009

Briefly just now. Is all this about secondary school textbooks?

I will withhold any comment until I know whether major college/university texts are what these remarks and the book are addressing.

Appreciated the author's comments in the past, by the way.

Vaughn Davis Bornet Ashland, Oregon

Jonathan Dresner - 12/4/2009

I'll have to take a look at it. I've used Wineburg's Historical Thinking in Historiography before -- most of my students were planning to go on to teach, and the same is true of my students now -- and it really gets people talking. It brings up all the old traumas of badly taught history classes, which we all vow never to inflict on our own students....

James W Loewen - 12/3/2009

What I (the author) would like to see here, your patience permitting, will be comments from those of you who have already read "Teaching What Really Happened," and/or who may plan to use it in teacher ed. courses, or to plan better ways to teach K-12 U.S. History. Negative reviews too, if courteous and useful. I'm always tryin' to learn....