
‘Lies My Teacher Told Me’ and America’s Post-Truth Era - matt4077
https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/08/history-education-post-truth-america/566657/?single_page=true
======
projektir
> We historians tend to make everything so nuanced that the idea of truth
> almost disappears. People in graduate history programs have said things to
> me like: Why should we privilege one narrative above others with the term
> “true”? That kind of implies that all narratives are equal—or, at least,
> that all narratives have some merit, that no narrative has all the merit.

This is happening a lot among more than just historians and it's a serious
problem. Some things _are_ true and that has consequences. Ignored, reality
will pass us by.

~~~
olavk
History _is_ extremely complex and nuanced, that is the problem. It literally
encompasses everything that ever happened. So anything you can say about
history is inherently an oversimplification with ignores a lot of possible
angles and voices and narratives. Just deciding what goes into a textbook in
inherently political, even if everything stated in the book are objective
truths.

~~~
m_mueller
The scientific way of looking at the world has never been, and potentially
will never be, absolutely true, as in a correct model that explains reality in
all its facets. I do however disagree with your position in one decisive way:
The scientific method demands that any stated fact is falsifiable, and that
already falsified facts are not used again as a basis for further theories.
Once it has been shown that flat earth is false, it cannot simply be said to
be "a different opinion" and that we have no right to stop its further
propagation. Nothing is provenly true, but we know what's false, anything else
is still up for discussion. So, once it has been shown with reasonable
documentation that things like Ausschwitz or Nanking or Japanese internment in
the US happened, it is not up to "politics" to make it part of history or not.
Sure, it can be rationalized and interpreted in different ways, but that
doesn't change any of the facts, as long as there is not a solid disprove of
these events that can deal with all the evidence that supports them.

Edit: The statement that contents are "political" is a classic unfalsifiable
claim, thus is an invalid argument. Evidence demands counter-evidence.

~~~
olavk
We can agree that the earth is not flat, but I don't think this is really the
issue. The article mentions the question whether the Japanese internement is
treated in single sentence, or on multiple pages with pictures, personal
accounts etc. Stating it is "a fact" does not really help you decide which
approach is appropriate for an US history textbook.

Yeah we can agree that textbooks should not make objectively false statements,
but that is not really the difficult part.

------
OliverJones
The Canadian writer Malcolm Gladwell has a podcast called "Revisionist
History" [http://revisionisthistory.com/](http://revisionisthistory.com/) in
which he drills into particular episodes of US history.

I find it interesting, even though I don't have the academic historical chops
to independently assess its accuracy.

Example: In the episode called Miss Buchanan's Period of Adjustment, Gladwell
explains that Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (the famous school
integration case) had a severe consequence. It caused a large fraction of
African American schoolteachers and educators to be thrown out of work. He
points out that teaching was a major source of 1930s-1950s knowledge-work
employment for African Americans was teaching in segregated schools. Quite a
few Euro-American school boards obeyed the ruling admitting African American
students, but did not employ the teachers from thew schools they left.

[http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/13-miss-buchanans-
per...](http://revisionisthistory.com/episodes/13-miss-buchanans-period-of-
adjustment)

~~~
tpurves
You have to be careful with Gladwell. His primary gift, is that is he is an
incredible storyteller. Take him as entertainment not as a historian or
scientist. He goes for surprising and unexpected simple reasons for
everything, often by cherry-picking individual facts or annecdotes.

~~~
cujo
Do you have any particular instances of him getting it wrong. I often here
this concern, but I'm yet to find someone that can point to a moment and say
he got it wrong.

~~~
chuckgreenman
This article from the Columbia Journalism review is level headed but tough,
and brings in a few specific examples:
[https://archives.cjr.org/the_observatory/the_gladwellian_deb...](https://archives.cjr.org/the_observatory/the_gladwellian_debate.php)

------
teddyh
I think it’s less likely to be intentional historical revisionism, and more
likely that Hanlon’s razor applies:

[http://machall.com/view.php?date=2005-04-06](http://machall.com/view.php?date=2005-04-06)

~~~
olavk
Hanlons Razor is often appropriate, but I'm not sure it is in the case of
history teaching. Teachers don't teach an incorrect or skewed version of
history because they are "dumb". They either do it because the want to impart
certain ideas and values to the students, or because they genuinely believe
this is a appropriate view of history, which just pushes the question one
level back - because who then taught the teacher the skewed version of
history?

~~~
claydavisss
Teachers teach the curriculum they are assigned, that is all. The only
variation is in private schools that do not conform to State and Federal
curriculum standards by default. In public schools, teachers do not decide
what they teach. Standardized testing guarantees that teachers stick to the
script also.

~~~
megaman22
So far as I am aware, standardized testing does not apply to history and other
non-core subjects. Like science also, unfortunately. Everything outside the
three Rs (reading, writing, 'rithmetic) is slashed, because that's what the
tests target.

~~~
alistairSH
You're wrong. Most states have some form of Standards of Learning (SOL)
testing at each grade level. These cover the three Rs, plus history and
science. Most of these were implemented as a result of the No Child Left
Behind Act.

Here's a listing of the tests given in VA...
[http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/released_tests/index...](http://www.doe.virginia.gov/testing/sol/released_tests/index.shtml)

~~~
megaman22
Interesting. I know that my state and the neighboring one only count the
reading, writing and mathematics portions of whatever standardized testing
they require. Although I believe that the state legislature just eliminated
the whole very expensive set of standards that they had just put into place.

------
Nasrudith
Brings to mind another related absurd pedagogical approach the "lies to
children" approach of starting by saying that molecules are the smallest
object possible. Then atoms. Instead of being truthful and mentioning quarks
but saying they are so advanced and deep that even most physicists don't even
do anything with them calculation related or otherwise.

~~~
quotemstr
"Lies to children" is a perfectly good pedagogic approach. Adding caveats to
every concept sucks time and energy from learning the broad themes of the
subject. When we teach people programming, we start with variables and loops
and don't mention page faults and cache poisoning. The same goes for any
field.

Demanding nuance of a _particular kind_ in history pedagogy, as you see often
these days, is just a bad-faith "isolated demand for rigor" that has the
effect of privileging the worldview of those demanding the selective nuance.

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-
demands...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/14/beware-isolated-demands-for-
rigor/)

------
baud147258
I've found it's true as well in France, regarding a lot of things, like the
middle age, age of enlightenment, the French Revolution and colonisation.

~~~
saiya-jin
Yeah, french people are very patriotic. There are some good reasons for that,
be it past or present, beauty of the country etc, but as with other over-
patriotic countries (I am looking at you US, but not only), a lot of people
like simple world views so France/US/whatever becomes simply the best country
ever, no real discussion allowed, critical view is ignored or simply attacked.

A bit more humble approach would do everybody much better, since every single
country out there has done things to be ashamed of, or outright utterly
horrible. Realizing you are not that much better than the other guy may bring
some sense of equality that I don't see in current world (american life worth
more than some other, modern colonialism done by former colonial powers
including US, Russia and probably China, and so on and on).

~~~
baud147258
Well, it not always in that direction, sure we got some patriotic chest-
thumping but also some abhorence of past achievements/periods/characters.

------
pjc50
There is an excellent fun little book "1066 and All That", which parodies
English history as people remember it from their education. It happens to have
been written in 1930 but most of its jokes hold up, and the subset that people
remember from that period hasn't changed quite so much.

History as remembered by the public is always going to be fragments made into
a mythos. The problem is that some of that mythos defines the propaganda
contours of the present, whether that's people saying the US civil war wasn't
about slavery or whether it's Brexiteers saying that "no deal will be fine
because we survived the second world war".

------
yosefzeev
This book was a breath of fresh air for me. I had taken a college level course
in history not terribly long before this book came out, and I felt that much
of the content was wrong or questionable. This book helped confirm my original
suspicion something I struggled with for quite some time. I am glad to see the
author is pushing forward with what he originally stated. He was right.

On another note, it is interesting to see the flag has the gold trim around it
in this shot.

~~~
finaliteration
I also enjoyed this book. However, I find it strange you had that experience
in a college level course. I took two terms of US history in college and the
professor had zero qualms about calling out discrepancies and shining a light
on how history was/is written through certain cultural standards and lenses.
Despite not really being a “history person”, they were some of my favorite
courses because I felt like there was very little bullshit being presented as
absolute truth.

~~~
MrLeap
Different professors are different. The person who taught my college general
education literature class used it as an opportunity to unapologetically
proselytize the good word of Jesus Christ. 90% of every quiz question or essay
prompt was relating every book back to Christianity.

I found it offensive, but at this point in my college career the fight had
been abraded out of me. I tried doing the assignments dispassionately, writing
things like "Taking for granted that there is an omnipotent entity at the helm
of the universe, I think the author contends that <rest of my answer>".

I'd get my paper back with every secular apologism scribbled out in red, and
comments on the margins that were like "JESUS LIVES" and other such
academically cool business. Also he was giving me D's. This was a state
school, not a religious one.

Having fought 25% of my professors that ended up being lunatics no appetite
remained in me to take this one to the tribunal. So, I salvaging my grade by
feigning conversion. I started writing incomprehensibly unrelated answers to
short essay questions. A question might read something like "In what way was
Dostoevsky influenced by stoicism." I would answer "God is great!" My reward
was A's.

I no longer find anything within a normal distribution of human arch-types
strange.

------
throw2016
The sanitized version prevents people from comprehending the scope of the
horror and abuse, bequeaths an air of normalcy, and leads to simplistic
conclusions in modern generations.

At every given point minorities have faced huge resistance for the simplest of
things and basic human equality and dignity - and I suspect every adult
educated citizen knows this - and the effects of these continue to fester.
It's not 'complexity' if you historically discriminate against people they
will suffer and there will be far reaching multi generational consequences.
This can't be wished away in denial, how can a problem remain unsolved after
200 years?

We hold others coming out of hundreds of years of colonialism to standards we
often to do adhere to ourselves and which these societies lacking development,
wealth and time have not had an opportunity to develop.

This becomes another way to not shine the torch on ourselves. Redlining,
housing policies, access to education, employment, credit, segregated living
and education and the police & justice system will not pass scrutiny. And this
has so far escaped global attention and censure but at some point the USA as a
whole will be held to account for the condition of the minorities. And at that
point the depravity of Pioneer and Volker funded studies by people like
Charles Murray - whose work continues to be used even on an educated forums
like this regularly, revisionist history and blaming others will not hold
because we do not accept these excuses from other countries we hold to
account.

------
42droids
I am from Europe and I find that this is true for _all_ European countries.

------
claydavisss
I have reviewed most of the history my kids learned as they were growing up.
Most of it is actually decent.

Often, uncomfortable truths are avoided where contemporary standards differ
wildly from a historical context. This is unfortunate because students do not
understand that "normal" changes over time. This is probably most pronounced
wrt race relations (e.g. what passed as normal race relations in 1860
throughout the entire US would be considered outrageously racist now...or the
idea that in 1943 Americans sympathized with imprisoned Japanese citizens, the
normalcy of anti-Semitism throughout most of history etc).

Instead children are taught to view the past through the standards and tastes
of the present, and history becomes a matter of making moral judgements and
shaping present morality (a valuable function but not the point of history).
But indeed even our study of history will one day make great history...what
happens when history is written by people who have never had to kill to
survive?

~~~
ewams
I've had this same conversation but concerning ages when normal things happen.
Look at when people got married and had children in 1860 vs 1960 vs 2018. In
this short amount of time people went from having children being normal from
12-14 to 18-30, to 25-40. Yes people still have children at young ages but it
is more of a norm to do it later. Just look at all the HN articles talking
about that the last couple years. Then listen to conversations when you hear
about a 22 year old marrying a 16 year old, things get said like "pedophile"
and "gross" and "thats just wrong." Even though not too long ago that was
normal.

And that feedback is just from the States. Other countries and regions are
different. Maybe here 18 is a magical age where you become an adult but in the
far East its 16. In Amazonia it is 13. (I just made those numbers up, I do not
know).

Makes you wonder, what is normal or moral to me that is just learned behavior
and not really normal or moral?

~~~
pjc50
These things aren't just arbitary changes, they're part of the consent
revolution and the general post-Enlightentment search to have reasons why we
do things rather than just the arbitary tyranny of ""normal"".

> 13

This stuff depends on place as well as time.

[http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1021569/Great-B...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1021569/Great-
Balls-Scandal-How-Jerry-Lee-Lewis-marriage-13-year-old-wrecked-career.html)

