Lies My Teacher Told Me Chapter 1

 First of all, I was very surprised to find out that Helen Keller was a devoted socialist. In my junior high school, our class actually read a play based on Helen Keller’s life but not once was her favor for socialism brought up in discussion.  If it had not been for this book, my image of Helen Keller would have forever been just a blind and deaf woman who overcame her disabilities, which is a great lesson alone but now I realize how her life was much more than that. Second, Woodrow Wilson was always a man who represented peace to me. He advocated the 14 points in order to create the League of Nations. Now I realize how wrong I really was. The president's decision to invade Latin America and to intervene in Russia's civil war was far from world peace and possibly and probably connects to the instability of many regions that are still at war today. 

 It is as if the people who created these high school textbooks divide each hero or historical figure's roles; Helen Keller as the woman who overcame her disabilities and Woodrow Wilson as a great example of how America led the world to peace after the world wars. Any information that might intervene with their purposes shall be erased from history. However, textbooks do not make history. History makes textbooks. That is the way it is supposed to be. The first chapter taught me just how easy it is for textbooks and teachers to create history and manipulate the way we think. It is certainly terrifying.