Lies My Teacher Told Me: Chapter 1 Summary & Analysis

This chapter is about “heroification”—the process by which fascinating, controversial people are gradually transformed into boring, one-dimensional figures in history textbooks. Textbooks are full of details about the lives of famous people, but rarely do they give a sense for those people’s flaws and inconsistencies—i.e., the very things that make them interesting.

Loewen begins by looking at two familiar figures from history textbooks: Helen Keller and Woodrow Wilson. Almost every American student knows that Keller was deaf and blind, yet learned to read, write, and speak. But textbooks almost never discuss Helen Keller’s adult life. In fact, Keller had a fascinating and consequential career as radical socialist. She praised the Soviet Union, supported unions, donated money to the NAACP, and even hung a red flag (a symbol of the Soviet Union, and of socialism) over her desk. Throughout her life, Keller was criticized for her “radical politics.” Whether we agree with Keller’s beliefs or not, Keller was a remarkable woman, whose legacy stretches far beyond her deaf-blindness—and yet almost no history textbooks say so.

Woodrow Wilson, the U.S. president during World War I, was an equally controversial figure. During his time in office, the U.S. sent hundreds of thousands of troops to Latin America and the West Indies to install pro-American heads of state. In 1915, for instance, when the democratic government of Haiti refused to join the U.S. in declaring war on Germany, Wilson sent forces to dissolve the Haitian parliament and seize farmers’ property. In the ensuing war, American troops murdered more than 3,000 Haitians who fighting for their rights to self-determination and private property.

Amazingly, history textbooks either ignore Wilson’s interventionist foreign policy, or characterize Wilson as a “reluctant warrior” who never wanted to send troops to the Americas. Such a characterization is “sheer invention.” Many textbooks describe Wilson as a courageous advocate for self-determination who fought for democracy in Europe. The truth, however, is that Wilson regularly violated other countries’ rights to self-determination in order to strengthen his own country. When Wilson was in France, supposedly negotiating for democracy and peace, he met with Ho Chi Minh, the future leader of North Vietnam. Wilson ignored Ho Chi Minh’s pleas for Vietnamese self-determination, and agreed to allow France to retain control of Vietnam.

Wilson’s dismissal of Ho Chi Minh brings up another point about his life that textbooks ignore: Wilson was one of America’s most racist presidents. His recent predecessors appointed black Americans to relatively important offices; Wilson, however, did not, and even made a point of appointing “Southern whites to offices traditionally reserved for blacks.” Wilson was the first president to segregate the navy, and routinely told offensive stories about “darkies” during his cabinet meetings. He was also a fan of The Birth of a Nation, one of the most racist major movies of all time, and his enthusiasm for the film, which glorifies the Ku Klux Klan, was probably a factor in encouraging the organization’s growth in the 1920s.

Textbooks rarely offer more than a sentence or two on Wilson’s racism—an omission that is, itself, racist. African Americans couldn’t possibly consider Wilson a hero, and yet textbooks routinely treat him as one. Textbooks also ignore some of Wilson’s other bad decisions. For instance, during World War I, Wilson was known to have supported the Espionage and Sedition Acts, which limited Americans’ rights to free speech and banned almost all public criticism of World War I. However, textbooks usually imply that Wilson just “went along” with Congress on the Espionage and Sedition Acts, even though there’s no historical evidence for such an interpretation.

For decades, Michael Frisch, a professor at the University of Buffalo, has asked his students to name the ten most important figures in America history before the Civil War; invariably, his students name Betsy Ross. Betsy Ross’s continued fame is perplexing, since it’s now known that Ross, contrary to popular belief, didn’t sew the first American flag. Frisch posits that Betsy Ross remains famous because she fits Americans’ need for a strong “archetype”—a “mother of our country” figure. Perhaps the continued popularity of Woodrow Wilson illustrates our need for another archetype: a strong, idealistic, clear-eyed leader. The problem is that, instead of complicating and challenging naïve archetypes, history textbooks reinforce them.

Why don’t textbooks tell the truth about American “heroes?” Recently, a major textbook editor privately said that “sex, religion, and social class” are “taboo” in history textbooks. This is an astonishing statement, because sex, religion, and social class are vital aspects of history. By leaving out Keller’s lifelong war against the American class system, for example, textbooks decontextualize Keller’s life work and make her seem boring. Textbooks may likewise omit Wilson’s racism because they want to be respectful or patriotic.

Ironically, by portraying Keller, Wilson, and other historical figures as unambiguously heroic, textbooks make student less impressed with these figures, not more so. Today’s high school students, when asked who their historical heroes are, rarely choose figures such as Helen Keller, Woodrow Wilson, Washington, Abraham Lincoln, or Christopher Columbus. Indeed, some students tell cruel “Helen Keller jokes”—not necessarily because they hate disabled people, but because they want to make fun of the “goody goody” hero about whom their teachers have lectured. If students could learn the truth about Keller—the risks she took in her life, and the controversy that she aroused—they’d be more likely to treat her as a real role model, rather than a punch line.