Why Do We Teach Our Kids That Columbus Discovered America?

That being said, slavery was also a product of early American (for one) society but that doesn't mean it's a good idea to have a day to celebrate it.

 

No I agree. I would also not perceive him as an hero or teach school children that. But I would teach them that Columbus' discovery of America had a big impact and therefor is a memorable day. I don't think it is celebrated that europeans enslaved africans and massacred native americans by the way. It is more so the start of a new era that is celebrated. Nuancing people, you should try it.

 

To be fair, Africans also enslaved Europeans but you don't hear much about that these days.

 

Sure history is important...and history often repeats itself. We are taught history to hopefully not make the same mistakes, but much of it is fiction......now isn'
t it, as we are learning here.....
tell me exactly what happpened.....dates are not important...year is....perhaps, though.

 

True, But when someone invades your country with guns blazing I think you have a right to enslave, hold hostage for ransom, and even cannibalize the spoils of war

Hotwater

 

With the slavery thing, surely it's a question of scale? Africans may have enslaved a few Europeans, but nothing like the numbers, or in the organized way the Europeans did it.
Also, the standard European view was that Africans were 'savages', whilst at the same time having a convenient blind spot where their own savagery was concerned.

Personally I don't see Columbus as any kind of hero. No doubt kids should be told that he sailed to the Caribbean in 1492, but they should also be taught as much as is known of earlier settlers,and the Vikings.

But I think the usual narrative of Columbus 'discovery' will continue to be taught as American culture grew out of European roots, and doesn't really want to deal with the history of the people who were on the continent before Europeans arrived.
I mean mainstream American culture BTW.

 

this whole 'savages' nonsense. you culture isn't my culture therefor you don't exist as a person. christianity has really been used terribly as an excuse for this. probably more then anything else.
an excuse concealing the motivation of greed. even before christianity though, rome endorsed that perspective and before rome greece. sure they had lots of lovely details of technological progression, and even up to a point, social, but the western hemisphere, in its own way had just as much. and its hidden from us by what children are taught. and that is a moral wrong.

 

grade school class is like 45min long, taught once and forgotten by the end of the day.

 

"The more things change, the more they remain the same." And the slaughter goes on.

 

Things like this, but a bit different were the reasons my parents never let us go to early school.

We were told by school that if your forefathers fought in ww2 then they were no longer a part of our history. Which did not sit well with a lot of people. So we got taken from school and raised by parents in which I lucked out over the rest and basically travelled all my early years. =]

 

I've met a couple of other Germans of my around my age - kids at school in the 60's - who told me the same thing. That must have been a strange thing to have a big piece of history just airbrushed out.

 

A point about slavery....everyone has been enslaved at one time or another. And no....the Africans didn't just take a few European slaves who invaded them. They went to Europe, took whoever was an easy target and left. It went on from about the 16th to the 19th century and well over a million slaves were taken from Europe (Barbary lave Trade). That doesn't excuse anyone else's actions later. And another point.....nobody went into Africa with guns blazing and took slaves. Prisoners from one village, tribe or area were being captured and enslaved by other tribes for untold generations. Many escaped and made it back home. Once the Africans realized that others were willing to buy their captives...that was the game-changer. Now they were more of a commodity. But nobody went in there and rounded up thousands of tribesmen and forced them to walk to waiting boats. They were rounded up and sold by other Africans.

 

[SIZE=medium]Give me a break - The Barbary Slave Trade had to do with North Africa under Ottoman rule - Sheesh! [/SIZE]


[SIZE=medium]Hotwater[/SIZE]

 

Columbus day is celebrated by many countries especially in latin america. They celebrate the arrival of Columbus in the Americas and this would be true irrespective to whether he was the first to come. The enterprise established that there could be a regular route for commerce and emigration for the then modern world. Some Italian americans celebrate Columbus day as a matter of national pride.

To those who lament european emigration and subsequent behavior in the new world, how would you make amends being descendant from those emigres?

 

Seattle renamed Columbus day to Indigenous People's Day

 

That's very troubling German school systems would teach that. The Allies may have won, but they were villains in of themselves. Making the entire nation of Germany into debt slaves after WWI among other terrible things. One could argue the Ally nations were responsible for Hitler's uprising. Especially since the US helped fund the Eugenics program that Hitler and many others tried to carry out.
The losers of wars never get to tell their side of the story. Doesn't it seem strange to anyone how when you read a public school history textbook, only the good guys win the wars?

 

Other countries have other names for it as well. Too bad it doesn't do anything to change anything.

 

History is written by the victors so they say, and no doubt it's true up to a point. I was educated in the UK during the 60's, and we were taught about the rise of Hitler, the treaty of Versailles etc, but we weren't taught anything like the truth about the war. The role of the Soviet Union was grossly played down, and yet really, it was they who took the worst casualties and actually played the main role in defeating Germany.
But that was back in the 60's. And at least the links between the two world wars were made clear. I shudder to think what kind of BS is taught now in school history classes.

 

Because from a Western perspective, he did.

 

Um...yup. It did. So what? My point was that most groups of people have been enslaved at one time or another and history doesn't always reflect that for exactly what it was (meaning history and/or winners pick the narrative in many cases). The same thing applies to Columbus and plenty of other topics.