Lies Told by My Teacher by James W. Loewen High school history textbooks are seen by students as the last word on American history. They rarely, if ever, question what their text tells them about our collective past. According to Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen, they should be. Loewen devoted much time and effort to revising history texts written for high school students. In Lies he revised twenty texts and compared them with real history. Unfortunately, no text lives up to the author's expectations of teaching students to think. What's worse, however, is that students leave lessons without "having developed the ability to think coherently about social life" (Lies p.4). Loewen blames this on the way today's lyrics are written. This article will compare one text, The American Pageant, with Lies. One of the biggest problems with texts today is the process of heroification. This process transforms real people, from our past, into “pious and perfect creatures without conflict, pain, credibility or human interests” (Lies p.9). Several examples, including the lions of our history, in Pageant include Christopher Columbus, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Woodrow Wilson. Others are vilified, such as Stephen A. Douglas and John Brown. In Pageant Christopher Columbus is one of the first people mentioned as relevant to our history. He is constructed as a hero, with words such as "a far-sighted, energetic, resourceful and courageous man" used to describe him (Pageant p.4). We are told that he knows the world is round, but that no one will believe him. He eventually convinces the Spanish monarchs to finance him, and is given "three small but seaworthy ships with crews... middle of paper... serves to explain why this song was so popular. In this case don't give it all facts about a historical figure comes at the expense of that person. The efforts made by many textbook writers to keep our history on a positive note and to make heroes of many of our historical figures come at a high cost, according to Loewen they include faulty history and boring history. The end result is students who hate history lessons and who come away from those lessons not equipped to think about our past rationally or coherently. Bibliography: Works Cited Thomas A. Bailey and David. M. Kennedy. The American Pageant, A History of the Republic Eighth Edition. D.C. Heath and Company: Lexington, Massachusetts, 1987. James W. Loewen My Teacher Told Me, Everything Your American History Teacher Got Wrong: New York, 1995.