John Holzmann's response to concerns about "Lies My Teacher Told Me"

John Holzmann's response to concerns about "Lies My Teacher Told Me" Response letter from John Holzmann to a client who had returned "Lies My Teacher Told Me" due to its content.

Dear Marie:

I received a copy of your letter today. It came at a good time: I have just (Monday night/Tuesday morning) finished editing our notes on Loewen's LIES MY TEACHER TOLD ME, so it is fresh in my mind. I am sorry you returned the book before you had the opportunity--or you gave your son or daughter the opportunity--to read our notes and/or to interact with the book from a biblical perspective. As you said, "It does not take too long to figure our that [Loewen] is writing" from a mindset other than that which we would want to espouse.

It is striking to me that the very passages from which you quoted as evidence of Loewen's Socialist mentality (pp. 274-275) are specifically NOT assigned in our history program. Indeed, that chapter, plus two or three others, are excluded. For cause. They're so far "over the edge," we didn't think it was worth our while or our students' time to interact with them.

AT THE SAME TIME, we believe there IS value in having students--especially high school students, especially students who are planning to go on to calling--to not only be AWARE of alternative perspectives they are likely to encounter in the non-Christian world around them, but to have THOUGHT THROUGH and FORMULATED RESPONSES to those alternative perspectives.

You said, "One only needs to visit Plymouth Plantation to find out how awful we Americans truly are and how there is very little to be proud of in the founding of our country." . . . I take it you wrote this sentence with your tongue firmly planted in your cheek. You don't mean this, do you? You went on to say, "We don't need to hear this [how awful we Americans truly are] from Sonlight as well."

I appreciate your desire to instill a sense of heritage in your children. We too, want to instill a strong sense of godly heritage in our children and in the children of those who purchase Sonlight Curriculum materials. Our difficulty--and your difficulty, too, I'm sure!--is to figure out how to do that: how to present the amazing, wonderful aspects of our history and heritage while neither under- nor over-stating the uniqueness of that history and heritage and the appropriate wonder we ought to feel about it. We constantly ask ourselves: How can we respond appropriately to those parts of our history that other people--even people who are well-disposed toward the United States--find offensive and believe should cause American citizens to hang our heads in shame? More specifically, AS CHRISTIANS and as people who are concerned for MISSIONARY OUTREACH to "people of color" and/or people who live in other lands, we ask: how should we deal with these parts of our history?

The fact is, few of us are even AWARE of these "other" parts of our history. (Few Americans are aware of much of ANY of our history. But that's a different matter.) But as we at Sonlight set out to develop a history curriculum, we asked ourselves how we would deal with the full RANGE of American history. WHAT WOULD WE TEACH? . . .

We decided we would cover "the good" AS WELL AS "the bad." We want our students to appreciate both the theory AND the practice of "the [ideal] American way." We also want them to be aware of and to have thought about those portions of our history that should cause most of us some discomfort . . . if only we are aware of them.

Why? Because then, when one of our students is ministering to an American Indian, for example, s/he won't be caught off-guard if that Indian says, "There is NO WAY I would accept your 'Gospel' of Jesus Christ! Your 'Gospel' is a WHITE MAN'S religion. . . . Do you know what your people did to mine? . . . "

The Sonlight student will be able to say, "Yes, I do know. I know about ________. And I understand your anger. I think I would be angry, too. But. . . ."

Interesting. I, too, revolted at Loewen's politics and economics at a number of places. And I was poised for a war of words. Indeed, I have written (and included in the Instructor's Guide) a lot of words in opposition to what he says at various points. . . . But then, having written notes at various points, I found that when I'd read a bit further, Loewen actually ACKNOWLEDGED my point-of-view. . . . And then he'd say (more or less): "So why don't the TEXTBOOKS talk about both sides?"

I found that--while you are correct, there is no doubt the man is a liberal (a MODERN liberal)--his primary "beef" is with the standard textbooks: that they don't teach the full RANGE of history, they avoid the DEBATE of history, they avoid mentioning subjects about which students might disagree. They don't confront the issues that make the study of history MEANINGFUL: they don't permit us to understand WHY liberals view events today from one perspective while conservatives view them from a wholly different perspective. As one of our customers wrote online recently: "Could someone give me the name of a book that might explain to me, from a Southern perspective, why the Civil War was fought? As it stands right now, from everything I've ever heard, there IS no Southern side; the war makes absolutely no sense. But SOMEONE must have felt they were doing 'the right thing.' --So what was their justification?"

It is that kind of one-sided history that we at Sonlight want to avoid. We want our students to UNDERSTAND "the other side," even if they don't "buy" it. (Indeed, depending on the issue, we DON'T want them to "buy" it.)

Here's another illustration of what I'm talking about (that though Loewen is politically "liberal," his primary "beef" has to do with the textbooks): At one point in our notes we consider Loewen's protest against the unwillingness of textbook authors and editors to tell the story of how RELIGION and RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS affected history. He made these comments in the context of a discussion about John Brown, the abolitionist murderer.

Brown, I discovered (as a result of Loewen's book!), was motivated to murder by his religious convictions. He based his courtroom defense on the Bible.

Now. You or I might question his INTERPRETATION of Scripture. We may want to argue vehemently against it. But the fact is, I had never even heard that he had TRIED to justify himself on the basis of Scripture. Why had I never heard this? As LOEWEN notes, it's because textbook authors seek to leave religion out of their textbooks entirely. . . . And so, AS A RESULT OF LOEWEN, we wind up raising a few questions in our Instructor's Guide about the place of religion in teaching and learning about history. . . .

(By the way: as a result of writing what I just have, I realize that, next year, we should probably extend our discussion of John Brown to have students consider the parallels and contrasts between Brown and, say, Paul Hill, the conservative Presbyterian minister who is convicted of having murdered a Florida abortionist not so many years ago. Was Brown's defense reasonable? Was Hill's? Why or why not? . . . )

I am sure we have not stricken the appropriate balance in our program. There's always room for improvement, and we're always working TO improve our program. I'm sorry we failed in your eyes.

You asked if I had any questions, please email you. I do have one question: Would you please suggest a BETTER book (or two or three?) that we could use IN PLACE OF Loewen's work and/or the American Indian Prayer Guide? We'd greatly appreciate your input!

Thank you so much.

Sincerely,

John Holzmann, Co-Owner