Lies My Teacher Told Me

that history still remains to be done—that it is not just an inert body of facts to be memorized.

Today Americans believe as part of our political understanding of the world that we are the most generous nation on earth in terms of foreign aid, overlooking the fact that the net dollar flow from almost every Third World nation runs toward the United States.

such as, “They served pumpkins and turkeys and corn and squash. The Indians had never seen such a feast!” When Native American novelist Michael Dorris’s son brought home this “information” from his New Hampshire elementary school, Dorris pointed out that “the Pilgrims had literally never seen ‘such a feast,’ since all foods mentioned are exclusivel

our textbooks began to play the same function as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, teaching us the meaning behind the civil rite of Thanksgiving. 72

the Library of Congress similarly cataloged its holdings for Plymouth under Pilgrim Fathers, and of course fathers was capitalized, meaning “fathers of our country,” not of Pilgrim children.

The American Pageant, “the world’s oldest republic had an extraordinary tradition of resilience and resourcefulness to draw on.” (Never mind that tiny San Marino may have formed as a republic in AD 301, Iceland became a republic in 930, and Switzerland around 1300.)

It invites students to come to their own conclusions. Textbook authors don’t let that happen. They see their job as presenting “facts” for children to “learn,” not encouraging them to think for themselves. Such an approach keeps students ignorant of the reasoning, arguments, and weighing of evidence that go into social science.

Even the Black Death reduced the population of Europe by only a third.

By 1880, owing to warfare and deculturation as well as illness, Native numbers had dropped to 250,000, a decline of 98 percent.