ela class---Wed

After reading Chapter 1 of Lies My Teacher Told Me, I was confused as to why being a socialist was considered to be a negative quality in a person, but my group members and Rab’s explanation helped me clear this up. When Helen Keller was around thirty years old, the Russian Revolution took place, and communism was praised. However, the U.S. was against communism and grouped socialism with it, so they did not welcome any people who praised the political views of their adversary. I was always vague about the difference between socialism and communism, so Rab’s mini-lecture on them greatly helped! When Loewen talks about Helen Keller, I did not sense any personal political bias of Loewen. I thought that he did a rather objective analysis on her. However, our group all agreed that Loewen heavily  and excessively concentrates on racism when he analyzes Woodrow Wilson. Though, at the same time, I wonder how people would ever find out about Wilson’s racist views and actions if educators like Loewen (who fearfully point out flaws of historical figures) did not introduce them. Because we seldom have these facts revealed to us in textbooks, I think that perhaps it is tolerable for Loewen to slightly exaggerate or emphasize them so that they will sink into the our brains since one thing that should be avoided is for imperfect historical figures to be “perfectionalized”.  

One of my group members claimed that Wilson is not the first president to do what Loewen said he did. He said Wilson was a president in the age of imperialism and that factor may have lead him to make the inhumane decisions that he made, such as invading the Latin American nations under the pretext of providing them “self-determination”. Anyhow, I wonder whether that justifies Wilson for what he did…