Summary
The author contends that textbooks are made to satisfy what they think the students, professors, and teachers want, as well as public opinion, which helps determine whether the approval committee will accept the book (265).
He points out that before 1945, only one African-American had been employed to teach history at any white college and university in America, and that most historians are white men. The biased picture of facts is certainly not due to a lack of historical documents from the time period.
Rather, whoever controls the present controls the past, said Orwell (267). History is written by the victors, and makes it difficult to change consensus. However, there is a rich amount of secondary literature and there are teachers who teach at the upper-class boarding schools who succeed in giving their pupils a well-rounded and informed historical education.
So the problem seems not to lie in the social pressures, but the unique pressures that surround the textbook publishing industry and how the books get approved. Around half of our states have approval boards which help winnow out anything that might be offensive.
States without boards still have a large influence on publishers, since the publisher has to get approval from each district. So publishers concentrate on the larger states with boards, thus allowing them to capture the biggest markets and earn more money (280).
People employed to rate the textbooks are also highly susceptible to focusing on issues they care about most, such as their own state's representation in the book, the general design of the book, and ancillary materials such as videos and skills-building.
Students pick up on the pandering and condescension in these books, and rebel by ignoring the subject matter. They find clever loopholes in order to pass, and then forget everything that might have stuck in their minds.
Analysis
The author uses rhetorical questions to a much greater extent in his final chapters, prompting readers to ask these questions of themselves, their peers, and their teachers (293-5). One can clearly see that Loewen hopes they will make up their own minds and argue for the truth, rather than accept what has simply been written down in a textbook. He also points out that sometimes teachers teach badly simply because they do not know the most current information themselves, something that the author believes should spur students to think for themselves even more.
It's important for students to gain a rich understanding of history, so that the younger generation can make the future better. Because textbooks that the author examined do not show the causes, only the details, most students forget much of the history that they learn, simply because they were not taught how to apply it to their current lives or how it can influence the present. The author passionately argues his case in these final chapters, moving away from the more objective tone he had during his analysis of recent event to full-fledged pleas, peppering his sentences with exclamation points.
His tone also becomes more overtly biting again as seen when he says, "Perhaps an upper-class conspiracy is to blame. Perhaps we are all dupes, manipulated by elite white male capitalists who orchestrate... " (266). Unlike with the many other bold statements he has employed in the book and gone on to refute, Loewen lets this one stand on its own, suggesting that readers start off with this frame of mind as they go forward. The lack of refutation implies that this is a belief that the author holds plausible, his maudlin tone notwithstanding.
Loewen also frames his book's conclusion by comparing what he has argued to what other scholars have said along the same lines, thus lending credence to his argument at the perfect moment. He posits many of his closing arguments in terms such as "I wonder," "Perhaps..." and "Interestingly" thus leading his readers to conclusions that he wishes them to draw while balancing out the bold statements (269).
However, the author also begins to make sweeping generalizations in these last chapters, frequently lumping people together in phrases such as "Most teachers" and "Many teachers," though we do not hear from these teachers (279-284). Other groups of people, from Native Americans to his peer historians, have been quoted and discussed in great detail. Loewen waxes poetic on the subject of teachers and what their motivations and thoughts must be surrounding their teaching material, but we do not get to hear from these teachers in their own words in nearly the same amount of depth that Loewen affords others. It is an omission that weakens this aspect of his otherwise compelling and thought-provoking book.
