Ugh missed to watch the CL final!!! Congratulations for Bayern Munich! I totally needed to watch that match!! Buuuuuuutttt, good news is that I get see David Beckham's last match next month in Japan! Very very very excited about it.
Anyways, back to the book.
Chapter 9 is about the Vietnam war. Since my American history class needed to cover the whole course in just a single year, I barely knew about it. The chapter explains how the whole process of censorship gets involved in textbooks when it comes to Vietnam war. For example, some photos that symbolize the cruelty of war are omitted from textbooks, including the most famous photo of a naked girl fleeing from a napalm attack in Highway 1. I was familiar with this particular photo because it was included in my history textbook in Japan. So I was surprised to know that most American textbooks eliminate showing this photo. According to Loewen, they do so in order to glorify the nation. In fact, "Not one of twenty-one photos shows any damage the United States inflicted upon Vietnam"(249). Moreover, history textbooks lack in exposing antiwar factors. Warfare is positively shown in textbooks, and is affirmed as a matter of fact. However, these censorship yields some serious consequences on the future generation. One-sided perspective of the war deprives the opportunities for the students to think critically. High schools ought to be a place where students acquire the ability to rationally judge certain affairs. And as part of it, history must serve to prevent repeating the same mistake again. In this case, history textbooks should show the inhumane actions of warfare so as to never let them come again instead of concealing the damage that the United States caused.
I am still not able to answer the questions, "Was the war right?" and "Was it ethical?". This shows that myself is an outcome of the corrupt American history textbooks.
As for Chapter 10, Loewen describes how textbooks treat every historical event as mere facts, considering them to be dead. I believe that this can also be applied to teachers' style of teaching history. My Japanese high school's history class was a complete crap. The class was absolutely passive, not letting any chances for the students to think about each historical event critically. Instead, it was solely aimed for passing university entrance tests, and was solid memorization. I mean, what is the purpose for learning history? For passing exams? Isn't there a much more profound meaning in learning the past events? Obviously,their method of teaching was tedious mainly because they presented history just like fake stories from fairy tales. They simply didn't sound really realistic, and was kind of hard for me to think that all those things actually happened. In one word, history was dead in that classroom. Therefore, it goes without saying that I found nothing appealing from my three years of learning history in my previous school. Other than textbooks' poor presentation of facts, the author also mentions that the most recent events are often skipped in detail. I remember spending so much time and class periods studying about the French Revolution and only a few lines on 9.11. It is totally understandable how some of the information of recent things remain obscure and may bring about dispute for their concealability, so textbooks are opt for avoiding them. However, comprehending the present allows students to attain multiple points of view, and perhaps is the most important thing of studying history. Thus, I believe that textbooks and history classes must put more emphasis on teaching about recent events more than any other thing.
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