Lies My Teacher Told Me stresses how students can repeat the same social studies class three times and still be ignorant of American history. Today, U.S. young adults leave most history courses with the false belief that the subject is only a bunch of facts and dates, completely boring, irrelevant to their lives and out of touch with the real world. Especially if a student is Latino, African-American, Asian or

Presenting natives as a 'doomed' race is comforting: "Feeling good is a human need, but it imposes a burden that history cannot bear without becoming simple-minded. Casting Indian history as a tragedy because Native Americans could not or would not acculturate is feel-good history for whites. By downplaying Indian wars, textbooks help us forget that we wrested the continent from Native Americans" (Loewen 133). More liberal textbooks portray native persons

This is a classic example to support Loewen's thesis of biased textbooks, inaccurate textbooks, and textbooks that eschew controversy. In general, according to Loewen, textbooks avoid the problems of the recent past, must to his dismay. This will only lead to improper education of American students and thus the Vietnam War serves as a solid example of his contentions. I believe that most of Loewen's claims are substantiated, except that he does have some left wing

Lies Paul Ekman is the Professor of Psychology at University of California, San Francisco. This book distills 15 years of scientific study of nonverbal communication and the clues to deception. Mr. Ekman, a pioneer in emotions research and nonverbal communication, and could be most succinctly subtitled "Lies succeed because no one goes through the work to figure out how to catch them." Mr. Ekman's detailed research delves into the question of just

Opening up to students is very important for teachers. While it is obviously not appropriate for a teacher to confide intimate personal details to the class, or gossip about others to try to be more accepted, there are ways that a teacher can seem more 'real' to the students. For example, crying over something very sad or letting the students know when the teacher is getting angry with their

Teaching Journal Today being a productive teacher is more challenging than ever. Children are much more used to varied classroom approaches, with the Internet, computers and other electronic equipment becoming the norm. Gone are the days when students sit quietly in their seats while the teacher stands and does mathematics on the chalkboard and reads from a textbook. I believe I am well prepared to meet this educational challenge. I know it