Read Lies My Teacher Told Me for Free Online

Buffalo. He asks his first-year college students
     for “the first ten names that you think of” in American history before the Civil War.
     When Frisch found that his students listed the same political and military figures year
     after year, replicating the privileged positions afforded them in high school textbooks,
     he added the proviso, “excluding presidents, generals, statesmen, etc” Frisch still gets a
     stable list, but one less predictable on the basis of history textbooks. Seven years out
     of eight, Betsy Ross has led the list. (Paul Revere usually comes in second.)
    What is interesting about this choice is that Betsy Ross never did anything. Frisch
     notes that she played "no role whatsoever in the actual creation of any actual first flag.“ Ross came to prominence around 1876, when some of her descendants,
     seeking to create a tourist attraction in Philadelphia, largely invented the myth of the
     first flag. With justice, high school textbooks universally ignore Betsy Ross; not one
     of my twelve books lists her in its index. So how and why does her story get transmitted?
     Frisch offers a hilarious explanation: If George Washington is the Father of Our
     Country, then Betsy Ross is our Blessed Virgin Mary! Frisch describes the pageants
     reenacted (or did we only imagine them?) in our elementary school years: ”Washington [the
     god] calls on the humble seamstress Betsy Ross in her tiny home and asks her if she will
     make the nation's flag, to his design. And Betsy promptly brings forthfrom her lap!the
     nation itself, and the promise of freedom and natural rights for all mankind.
    [ think Frisch is onto something, but maybe he is merely on something. Whether or not one
     buys his explanation, Betsy Ross's ranking among students surely proves the power of the
     social archetype. In the case of Woodrow Wilson, textbooks actually participate in
     creating the social archetype. Wilson is portrayed as “good,” “idealist,” “for
     self-determination, not colonial intervention,” “foiled by an isolationist Senate,” and
     “ahead of his time.” We name institutions after him, from the Woodrow Wilson Center at the
     Smithsonian Institution to Woodrow Wilson Junior High School in Decatur, Illinois, where I
     misspent my adolescence. If a fifth face were to be chiseled into Mount Rushmore, many
     Americans would propose that it should be Wilson's." Against such archetypal goodness,
     even the unusually forthright treatment of Wilson's racism in Land of Promise cannot but fail to stick in students' minds. Curators of history museums know that their
     visitors bring archetypes in with them. Some curators consciously design exhibits to confront these archetypes when
     they are inaccurate. Textbook authors, teachers, and moviemakers would better fulfill
     their educational mission if they also taught against inaccurate archetypes. Surely
     Woodrow Wilson does not need their flattering omissions, after all. His progressive
     legislative accomplishments in just his first two years, including tariff reform, an
     income tax, the Federal Reserve Act, and the Workingmen's Compensation Act, are almost
     unparalleled, Wilson's speeches on behalf of self-determination stirred the world, even if
     his actions did not live up to his words.
    Why do textbooks promote wartless stereotypes? The authors' omissions and errors can
     hardly be accidental. The producers of the filmstrips, movies, and other educational
     materials on Helen Keller surely know she was a socialist; no one can read Keller's
     writings without becoming aware of her political and This statue of George Washington, now in the Smithsonian Institution, exemplifies the
     manner in which textbooks would portray every American hero; ten feet tall, blemish-free,
     with the body of a Greek god.
    social philosophy. At least one textbook author. Thomas Bailey, senior author of The American Pageant, clearly knew of the