Understanding the Truth

From the start, children are raised not to lie or change stories but to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. This is hard to do especially if they are not being told the right stories or being lied to. History is a hard subject to teach because you want to tell the right stories but not if it makes your country seem less patriotic or fair, right? Why would we include the awful deeds our country committed? Well because children are being taught lies. Telling false stories to support out famous quote, “America the home of the free and land of the brave.” The children of the United States of America are being misinformed on what really happened in our history.

During the eight years of school before high school one would think the textbooks or teachers would mention or give an idea of what really happened in our history but they don’t. In Re-examining the Revolution, Ray Raphael gives an example, “Not one of the elementary or middle school texts even mentions the genocidal Sullivan campaign, one of the largest military offensives of the war, which burned Iroquois villages and destroyed every orchard and farm in its path to deny food to Indians.” The only reason not to include these descriptions is that maybe the audience is too young? Or it is easier to omit? Or is this too graphically ugly? Maybe they want to protect the innocence of children but should it be at the expense of truth?

One of the big issues with the distortion of history is that plenty of people want to believe these ‘wonderful stories with happy endings.’ Re-examining the Revolution, by Ray Raphael also includes, “Not one current textbook chronicles the first overthrow of the British rule. How strange that the story of any revolution can be told without at least a mention of the initial overthrow of political and military authority. This is the damage of mythmaking-real history gets lost, much of it is very important.” To think that a history book could tell a story with out even mentioning basically the first win. Why? Because it is more important that we don’t talk about when we were defeated but when we triumphed.

People want heroes. Who doesn’t want somebody to look up to? It’s just a matter of who one looks up to and why. On page 36 of Lies My Teacher Told Me, James W. Loewen claims, “For when textbook authors leave out the warts, the problems, the unfortunate character traits, and the mistaken ideas, they reduce heroes from dramatic men and women to melodramatic stick figures. The inner struggles disappear and they become goody-goody, not merely good.” People want real heroes, not somebody just made up to be one. People do make mistakes and this is a well known fact so why not include the details to what got them to their major victory? It isn’t always that the textbooks are portraying somebody for who they aren’t, it is that they are not including the details that pain everybody. If the stories were told to gain a greater understanding of how it happened not how great the person is, it would be more realistic.

History is an important topic. It is about our past and our ancestors, it is not something to be messed with. When textbooks are written, they should be written with a truthful narrative not a blind one. Mentioning the bad is for the greater good and understanding. These warming tales do not cut it and we need to stop spoon feeding the people of America the wrong information.