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History Lessons: How textbooks from around the world portray U.S. history
by Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward
How textbooks from around the world portray U.S. history
They say that it's the winners who write the history books, but that's not entirely true. Every country – win or lose – has its own tale to tell. And, most often, the place you'll find their views of history is in textbooks.
Each country has an identity and passes on that identity to its youth. A recent book, History Lessons: How textbooks from around the world portray U.S. History , written by Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward, shows the many different interpretations of the history of our country.
The authors did a great job of showing how it's all a matter of perspective – who wins, who loses, what the motives were, even the facts of what happened are all up for grabs. An example they give is the explosion of the Maine. U.S. texts (until recently) have always blamed the explosion on the Spanish. Spanish texts place the blame on U.S. spies, who (they say) were eager to enter the war, but needed popular approval. Cuban texts say that the explosion was caused by Cuban patriots who were tired of waiting for the U.S. to intervene. And although more recent theories suggest that it may have been an accident, a problem with the storage of explosive material in the hull of the ship, there is no one answer. The children of the world are all learning different things, and I found it interesting.
One idea that I really took away from this is that there is no possibility of a global history. It's all up to what each country decides. And what they teach. Our country has chosen its interpretation of events, but that doesn't make them entirely true. I never learned, for example, that some countries saw the Great Depression as an inevitable consequence for capitalism and democracy. Or that the American Revolution was born (in part) out of French philosophers ideas about liberty. Or that the French Revolution may not have been a success without our own. While there is no global history, I also realized the world is much more connected than our texts would have us believe, that there is no American history separate from the history of the world. In fact, I was surprised to find that other countries pay much more attention to our history than we do to theirs – or even to ours.
Their books gave the reality behind so much of what we skimmed over in history class: What does a mass emigration to the U.S. mean for those left behind? What was Canada's role in the development of nuclear weapons? What have we, as Americans, idealized about our own history that other countries are able to communicate more clearly? And what have other countries decided about us? It's all there, in what they are teaching their youth. The way we're portrayed in some of these books is especially harsh. One North Korean text called us both “foolish” and “bastards.” But current events also show that we are not us popular with the rest of the world as we once thought. It was both amazing and informative to be able to see some of the reasons why.
Title: History Lessons: How textbooks from around the world portray U.S. history
Author: Dana Lindaman and Kyle Ward
Publisher: The New Press
ISBN: 1565848942
Review written by: Melissa
Reviewer's Rating:9.5
Reader's Rating: 0
Reader's Votes: 0
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