Quotes from James W. Loewen

All of the common core standards stuff about critical reading and critical thinking and so on can only be positive.

I'm looking forward to the future, which is a good thing, because it's coming.

The antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honest and inclusive history.

Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat the eleventh grade.

History can be a weapon, and it can be used against you.

In sum, U.S. history is no more violent and oppressive than the history of England, Russia, Indonesia, or Burundi - but neither is it exceptionally less violent.

The antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history but honest and inclusive history.

In sum, U.S. history is no more violent and oppressive than the history of England, Russia, Indonesia, or Burundi - but neither is it exceptionally less violent.

It is always useful to think badly about people one has exploited or plans to exploit... No one likes to think of him or herself as a bad person. To treat badly another person whom we consider a reasonable human being creates a tension between act and attitude that demands resolution. We cannot erase what we have done, and to alter our future behavior may not be in our interest. To change our attitude is easier.

Americans need to learn from the Wilson era, that there is a connection between racist presidential leadership and like-minded public response.

Paulo Freire of Brazil puts it this way: "It would be extremely naïve to expect the dominant classes to develop a type of education that would enable subordinate classes to perceive social injustices critically.

By idolizing those whom we honor, we do a disservice both to them and to ourselves. . . . We fail to recognize that we could go and do likewise. —CHARLES V. WILLIE

We seem to feel that a person like Helen Keller can be an inspiration only so long as she remains uncontroversial, one-dimensional. We don't want complicated icons. "People do not like to think. If one thinks, one must reach conclusions," Helen Keller pointed out. "Conclusions are not always pleasant.

History is furious debate informed by evidence and reason.

He is a lover of his country who rebukes and does not excuse its sins. —FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Ironically, Adolf Hitler displayed more knowledge of how we treated Native Americans than American high schoolers today who rely on their textbooks. Hitler admired our concentration camps for American Indians in the west and according to John Toland, his biographer, "often praised to his inner circle the efficiency of America's extermination—by starvation and uneven combat" as the model for his extermination of Jews and Gypsies (Rom people).94

Native Americans are not and must not be props in a sort of theme park of the past, where we go to have a good time and see exotic cultures. "What we have done to the peoples who were living in North America" is, according to anthropologist Sol Tax, "our Original Sin.

It is always useful to think badly about people one has exploited or plans to exploit.

Cherishing Columbus is a characteristic of white history, not American history.

Critical thinking requires assembling data to back up one's opinion. Otherwise students may falsely conclude that all opinions are somehow equal.

If you truly want students to take an interest in American history, then stop lying to them.

These Americans believed that one great male god ruled the world. Sometimes they divided him into three parts, which they called father, son, and holy ghost. They ate crackers and wine or grape juice, believing that they were eating the son's body and drinking his blood. If they believed strongly enough, they would live on forever after they died.

History, despite its wrenching pain, Cannot be unlived, and if faced With courage, need not be lived again. —MAYA ANGELOU1

When students are not asked to assess, but only to remember, they do not learn how to assess or how to think for themselves.