Lies My Teacher Told Me (Chapter 3)

This chapter has answered the one question which had been with me ever since I first went to an international school at the age of 7. Why are Americans so confident in their own culture when they have nothing to be proud of (well with the exception of it's exaggerated hollywood films and peanut butter chocolate)? Until today I had been telling myself that it was just the Japanese who were so unpatriotic. There was more than that. The people of USA were so proud of their culture, because they were taught so at school! Not that American teachers went around preaching that America was the best and all other countries are inferior. They did go around mesmerizing kids to think that their founding fathers had god on their side and so did they, however. So maybe it is the same thing. I loved how James Loewen quoted "Today, when textbooks promote the ethnocentrism with their Pilgrim stories, they leave students less able to learn from and deal with people from other cultures" (pg. 90). This may be what has really happened. Of all the international students I met back in Austria/Serbia/Slovenia, the most confident were always from America. Or the local kids with their porches.
Anyway, the fact that a majority of the information that are on American textbooks are made-up stories or are only telling one side of the argument is really disturbing. Knowing that the post-WW2 Japan has based its policies following the guidelines of the American government is even panicking. I have not lived in Japan all my life, but realizing that many of the students I go to university with have probably taken education programs similar to this in Japan is honestly freaking me out. I may simply be a bit paranoid, but this chapter along with the previous LLA class by Rab and lectures by prof. Arimoto has really been a revelation to me. However, I have also not forgotten that each of these teachers (Rab, prof. Arimoto, James Loewen) have their own biases. This chapter has reinforced my opinion that Loewen has a tendency to silently swap topics from historical ones to social and racial problems. He has done exactly that on page 91, when discussing the 350th anniversary speaker. This chapter has however, changed the impression that Loewen is an Eurocentric man. He speaks fairly for each race, and strives to keep the harmony between different skin color.