Latest James W. Loewen Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

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

  James W. Loewen

  Looking Forward, Good Things, Looking Forward To The Future

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

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

  James W. Loewen

  Weapons, Used

  Source: www.truth-out.org

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

  James W. Loewen

  Reading, Thinking, Being Positive

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

• The world, of course, doesn't come divided into disciplines. The world just is.

  James W. Loewen

  Discipline, World, Divided

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

• Very few college professors want high school graduates in their history class who are simply "gung ho" and "rah-rah" with regard to everything the United States has ever done, have never thought critically in their life, don't know the meaning of the word "historiography" and have never heard of it. They think that history is something you're supposed to memorize and that's about it. That's not what high school, or what college history teachers want.

  James W. Loewen

  Teacher, School, College

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

• I don't think teachers read the textbooks. And I don't think adoption committees read the textbooks before they adopt them. I think they look at them.

  James W. Loewen

  Teacher, Thinking, Adoption

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

• Nobody would ever want to read a textbook about the Civil War and then interrupt that for two pages about water rights in the west.

  James W. Loewen

  War, Two, Rights

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

• What gets lost in the textbook is the overall narrative. It gets lost in all the boxes and all the photos and all the little stuff that's stuck in all the time.

  James W. Loewen

  Littles, Narrative, Stuff

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

• Many Americans have never owned a book. And others have never owned a non-fiction book. Providing them with a 300-page paperback would get them started, maybe. And even if it didn't, at least they'd own that one. So that's a serious problem.

  James W. Loewen

  Book, Fiction, Pages

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

• The layout of textbooks, I think, has been done with an assumption that students don't read.

  James W. Loewen

  Thinking, Done, Textbooks

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

• Many Americans have never owned a book, and I'm not talking about because of the recent digital revolution. I'm talking about before there even was a digital revolution.

  James W. Loewen

  Book, Digital Revolution, Talking

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

• I've been in towns where there is no library, or where the library for the high school and the library for the town is one room, and it's smaller than my modest living room here. So you don't have many resources in 1950 or even 1970. This is the year, 2013, every town in America is connected to the web. Every town in America is therefore connected to all kinds of resources at the Library of Congress, at 100,000 websites.

  James W. Loewen

  School, Years, America

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

• There's no excuse therefore, for a 1,152 page book. I think we should all be using 300-page paperbacks. These exist.

  James W. Loewen

  Book, Thinking, Pages

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

• There is no excuse for these 1,152 page textbooks.

  James W. Loewen

  Pages, Textbooks, No Excuses

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, August 12, 2013.

• You go to towns in Massachusetts, Greenfield, first settled in 1686. Wouldn’t it be cool if it said, “Greenfield. First settled c. 13,000 B.P. or approximately 13,000 Before the Present. Resettled.” Maybe we could say even, “Resettled by whites,” Or, “Resettled anyway, 1686.” It would have a different impact. And of course it would help explain why the town is called Greenfield, because it was a green field and the fields were left by Native people who had already been farming them.

  James W. Loewen

  Impact, Green Fields, People

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

• Textbooks pretty much have no real drama. They have no real storyline. To the extent they have a storyline.

  James W. Loewen

  Drama, Real, Textbooks

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• I often suggest in workshops that if you have 30 students in your American History course in 11th grade, or whatever grade level, that you maybe triple them up. You put, and have them choose, let's say 11 different Native American cultures. Maybe you give them a list of 15 and they choose 11 of those 15 so that they have some choice in the matter.

  James W. Loewen

  Native American, Giving, Choices

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

• We still have to realize that if you are say a historian of the Civil War, you don’t know anything special about say Columbus or for that matter the 20th century. You are a consumer of that information, especially if it’s stuff like Columbus and the American Indians. That information isn’t even in history, much of it. Much of it is in anthropology or archeology.

  James W. Loewen

  War, Special, Information

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

• Teachers need to teach the subject rather than to teach the textbook.

  James W. Loewen

  Teacher, Needs, Textbooks

  Source: www.truth-out.org

• I think the first important thing is that usually most textbooks are not written by their authors. And so by author I mean the people who did not write them; so it's a new definition of "author."

  James W. Loewen

  Writing, Mean, Thinking

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.

• Textbooks are written in an oracular monotone, so that they claim to be true and important.

  James W. Loewen

  Important, Textbooks, Claims

  "Oh What a Web Textbooks Weave…". Interview with Daniel Falcone, truthout.org. August 12, 2013.