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LIES & AMERICAN HISTORY

This examination explores how American history is presented in high school textbooks and roadside monuments, focusing on the inaccuracies and biases inherent in these forms of education. Textbooks are often designed to avoid offending audiences, aim to produce "good" citizens, and may prioritize style over substance, leading to the omission of vital historical facts. Similarly, roadside monuments often reflect a selective version of history, driven by those who fund them and their specific narratives, resulting in a distorted understanding of significant events and figures.

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LIES & AMERICAN HISTORY

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  1. LIES & AMERICAN HISTORY

  2. WRITING AMERICAN HISTORY HIGH SCHOOL TEXTBOOKS • Written Not to Offend Multiple Audiences • Written to Produce “Good” Citizens • Reviewed by People Who Can’t Read Them in Detail So They Focus on Their Needs • Publishers Copy Formats of Successful Books

  3. Books with “Glitz” (color pictures, jazzy cover, etc.) Often Make Better Impression Than More Accurate Books With Less Glitz • Authors May Not Know Historical Facts • Authors Often Not Willing to Seek Out Original Sources

  4. AMERICAN HISTORY ON ROADSIDE MONUMENTS • EXAMPLES: • Almo, Idaho: monument to battle between white pioneers and native americans that never happened want to keep it up • Valley Forge, Pa.: promotes idea that revolutionary army endured extraordinary hardships and suffering while camped there even though historical accounts do not support this

  5. Valley Forge, Pa.: George Washington portrayed as a devout Christian which historians agree he was not • Gettysburg, Pa.: South Carolina monument extols their Confederate dead who fought for freedom and states’ rights. Maintaining slavery is not mentioned. The Confederate Constitution built in no right for a state to secede, but it forbade states from ever “impairing the right of property in Negro slaves.”

  6. WHY ARE ROADSIDE MONUMENTS INACCURATE? • The people who put them up (pay for them) have a version of the truth they want displayed • People have a need to remember things in a particular way

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