LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME

I strongly recommend the book referred to in the title of this entry. By James Loewen, the book discloses in how many ways our high school textbooks are being distorted and censored (specially in Texas, land of the neocon stooge) so that high school students can get through all of the education most of them will ever have without being asked to engage in any real analysis of the problems existing in American society. Below are a few of the bits of info that leaped out at me in Loewen’s Chapter, ironically named, “The Land of Opportunity”.


“Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.” —Abraham Lincoln (p.194)

“…learning to turn off lower-class students… schools have put into practice Woodrow Wilson's recommendation: ‘We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class of necessity in every society, to forgo the privilege of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.’ ” —Woodrow Wilson (p.198)

“Stressing how middle-class we all are is particularly problematic today, because the proportion of households earning between 75 percent and 125 percent of the median income has fallen steadily since 1967. The Reagan-Bush administrations accelerated this shrinkage of the middle class, and most families who left its ranks fell rather than rose. This is the kind of historical trend one would think history books would take as appropriate subject matter, but only four of the twelve books in my sample provide any analysis of social stratification in the United States.” —James Loewen (p.197)

HAIKU FOR TODAY (Think about it.)

If someone tells you
I love you with all my heart,
they hold back a lot.