Everyone likes a hero. From the earliest narrative books we encounter to the informational texts in school, there is always a hero, but how exactly did that hero come to be? In Loewen's book, he analyzes two public figures that have been formed into the perfect hero, Helen Keller and President Woodrow Wilson.
Did you know Helen Keller became a public figure through her social activism? I didn't. In grade school, I remember reading the vignettes describing her life or the short clips the teacher played showing how Helen Keller overcame her physical handicaps with the help of her teacher, Anne Sullivan. This can be attributed to the need of school books to "inspire" children to reach their true potential. Although, this is not a bad thing to want to inspire a children, we must also tell the whole story. She subscribed to the idea of socialism after researching the blind population and realizing it was concentrated higher in the lower class. She believed that social classes put controls on people's opportunities. Everyone had always commented on her intellectual ability, but with her political stances, people deemed her as "especially liable to error." It is much easier to leave out Helen Keller's life after grade school for teachers do not have to explain her controversial social views or other people's attack on her disabilities.
President Woodrow Wilson, a man who embarrassingly enough, I had forgotten a lot of details about his presidency since high school. Could this be attributed to the way he was portrayed in the textbook? After reading Loewen's description of him through his own research conducted from 18 history textbooks, I believe the answer is yes, it did hinder my learning and lasting memory of his policies. However, I do remember Wilson's "reluctant" leadership into World War I, but some things that have since diminished from my knowledge base are Wilson's racial segregation policies and his other military interventions in other countries. Textbooks omit or attempt to justify events to create hero-type Americans. Some of Wilson's Latin American "interventions" are discussed, but the textbooks blame the country being invaded or assert that Wilson "reluctantly"deployed troops to intervene. However, in a few chapters following the discussion of Wilson, his name is omitted and President Coolidge, Hoover, and Roosevelt are credited with implementing the Good Neighbor Policy, but with the omission of Wilson's name, students often forget his role in the force used in Latin America. In fact, the secretary of the navy stated his unrest in following Wilson's orders. Presidents serving before Wilson often appointed African American as postmasters and were invited to some White House functions. Little did African Americans know that with their vote for his election would bring turmoil to their civil liberties fight. Wilson segregated the federal government and used anticommunism accusations as a means to stop black organizations. The navy was segregated for the first time. He vetoed a racial equality clause in the Covenant of the League of Nations. The policies that Wilson implemented had lasting impacts; the federal government remained segregated into the 1950s and after. With the guidance of the national leader, Americans took to a more aggressive move towards racial segregation. From the Wilson terms, students have the chance to learn the cause and effect relationship between a hero and its followers; however, they describe the hero as having "noble intentions," making the reader the only one to question his actions. How do we create learning opportunities for our students to allow them to question effectively to find what really happened in history?
Heroification is a term that textbooks, history museums, and teachers could coin. Through hero-making, textbooks create the idealistic America that they want students to be proud of and remember. The problem with this stance is it alienates some Americans; the texts are written from a "white perspective" making other stances to be seen as invalid.
After all, what is in a textbook is a FACT (or is it?). Loewen believes it is not, and I am starting to see just that.
It would be impossible for me to list all the key facts that Loewen found missing or glazed over in history textbooks; however, I have attempted to provide the ones that stood out to me as information that I found lacking in my own knowledge or troubling.
This review is from my reading of Loewen's, Ch. 1 Handicapped by History.
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