Do schools still teach kids that America was "discovered" by Europeans?

[raccoon]

Or is there any effort to present a slightly different perspective?

[madaboutharry]

1. My daughter wrote a paper last year in high school

in which she discussed the fact that Christopher Columbus was a slave monger and a participant in genocide. She got an A.

[ejpoeta]

9. good to hear. if i had written that kind of a paper in HS, i would have been sent to the principal'

s office or something. Good on you and whoever else is giving a more accurate account to your daughter of how this country was born.

[Kceres]

2. My kids' school discusses the controversy.

My oldest son reported that most of his classmates share the opinions of their parents.

[donco6]

3. Ours don't.

They don't even use the term "discovered." They just talk about pre-historic N. America - who was here, where they came from, the Clovis people, other Americans, then the Greenland Scandinavians, Europeans, etc.

[LiberalFighter]

20. A little difficult to discover America when there were at least 10 million.

[donco6]

35. Exactly.

I think that idea has been expunged from just about any text I've seen lately. Of course, there are still some RW fundie Christian homeschooled texts that are all over Columbus.

[Veritas_et_Aequitas]

4. I don't know about other districts,

but by me that's no longer the case, at least at the secondary level.

[Bandit]

5. America was discovered by Europeans, quite to the dismay of the local people here.

In fact Columbus Day is still a Federal holiday, also much to the dismay of American Native people.

[Cid_B]

26. Side note...

I know it isn't but damn if your avatar doesn't just scream Dr. Who.

[LuckyTheDog]

6. Our kid's school doesn't

But then, it's an inner-city charter school where almost all the students are African American.

[ejpoeta]

7. well, every columbus day i take the opportunity to tell my almost 10 year old

that columbus didn't discover america. that's why it's not called columbus. it's called america after amerigo vespuci. oh, and let's not forget leif ericson. and hey, weren't there native americans living here already!!! obviously it had already been 'discovered'. but the europeans who thought they owned everything everywhere. geesh.

i remember when i went to college and learned about all the lies i had been taught in school. about how the indians were 'savages'. that blurry account of how great americans are and early americans were. yeah. it's eye opening, really. i wonder how many americans still believe the propagandized history they were taught in school. hmmm.

[OwnedByFerrets]

24. And when your child is old enough, you might tell him/her the

real truth about Columbus....

"Columbus and his men also used the Taino as sex slaves: it was a common reward for Columbus’ men for him to present them with local women to rape. As he began exporting Taino as slaves to other parts of the world, the sex-slave trade became an important part of the business, as Columbus wrote to a friend in 1500: “A hundred castellanoes (a Spanish coin) are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in demand.”

http://www.thomhartmann.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=77&Itemid=120

[ejpoeta]

25. and this guy get's a damned holiday!!!! i did not know that!!!

[OwnedByFerrets]

31. The whitewasing of history......the b*sh administration will

do the same if given the chance. We must not let it happen.

[Deep13]

8. My limited understanding is that Columbus...

...marked the beginning of the European expansion into the Western Hemisphere. It was a discovery for that limited purpose. Otherwise, it is pretty well understood that native people were here since the ice age and that Norsemen came to North America centuries before Columbus.

[stray cat]

14. You're right and I heard that in school in the 1970s even

[DBoon]

27. but without Columbus the English would have been here anyway

English fishing vessels ventured further and further west at the time of Columbus.

John Cabot landed in what is now Canada in 1497.

I think the most important fact is that the Europeans had invented sails that alow them to travel against previaling winds. This meant that after visiting the Americas, they could then return.

It is likely that other European and Middle Eastern sailors landed in America (Phoenicians, etc.) but were unable to return.

[Deep13]

30. Columbus was the first, but not the cause.

As you say, if it was not him, it would have been someone else.

[gollygee]

10. My daughter is in first grade

They learned who the "first European settlers" were. They did not learn that America was "discovered" by Europeans.

[lunatica]

11. They may not have discovered it but they sure invented it

And claim it to be theirs by dint of whitemanship. Dontcha know, it's the white man's burden...

[OwnedByFerrets]

12. They still teach kids that Columbus was a hero also, rather than

a murdering pedophile.

[cali]

19. not what my kid was taught- not even close, obf

but you of course feel competent to proclaim what kids all across this country are taught. figures.

[OwnedByFerrets]

33. Arent you and your children special.

Go snark somewhere else.

[OwnedByFerrets]

41. And, btw....show me where I stated that ALL kids across the country

are taught this. You assume a lot and it seems that most of it is dead wrong.

[donco6]

36. Our kids had a huge debate about that last year.

We are an old Italian truck farm neighborhood that has changed to 72% Chicano/a. Interesting discussion about the whole issue. We really don't have any Columbus worshippers here.

[FSogol]

13. They consider it an "encounter" rather than a discovery.

Columbus encountered these other cultures and vice versa. The Virginia SOL (Standards of Learning) tests go into great depth in elementary schools on all the the explorers. They teach about dozens of explorers both famous and obscure. Most adults could not pass the test.

[Stuckinthebush]

15. No, not around here

My daughter talked about Columbus as the first wave of European explorers who brought disease, slavery, and death to the Americas.

That's a far cry from my days of "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue..."

[EstimatedProphet]

16. Discovered has many meanings

Columbus "discovered" the Americas, as far as the major European powers were concerned. The Vikings "discovered" the Americas when they found Greenland, but that knowledge never got through to the rest of Europe. The Phoenicians may have even discovered the Americas, but they never told anybody.

[cali]

17. My son wasn't taught that and that was several years ago

In his American History class in 10th grade, one of the texts was Zinn's Peoples' History.

[raccoon]

21. Wow, what an enlightened school! Public or private? nt

[cali]

28. public school in a hick community

mixed red neck and old hippie territory. Of course these two taught at his high school (although that was before his time):

Garret Keizer is an American author, writer and essayist. He has written numerous critically acclaimed books including: Help: The Original Human Dilemma, The Enigma of Anger, and A Dresser of Sycamore Trees. He is also a regular contributor to Harper's Magazine and to The Christian Century. He has served as a Episcopal priest and a High School English teacher. He grew up in New Jersey and now lives with his family in Northeastern Vermont.


Authored Books
The Enigma of Anger: Essays on a Sometimes Deadly Sin
A Dresser of Sycamore Trees: The Finding of A Ministry
Help: The Original Human Dilemma
God of Beer
No Place But Here: A Teacher's Vocation in a Rural Community
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garret_Keizer

Howard Frank Mosher is a contemporary author of ten books: nine fiction and one non-fiction. Much of his fiction takes place in the mid-20th century and all of it is set in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, a region loosely defined by the three counties in the northeastern corner of the state (Essex, Orleans, and Caledonia).

His books, in order of publication, are:

Disappearances (1977)
Where the Rivers Flow North (1978)
Marie Blythe (1983)
A Stranger in the Kingdom (1989)
Northern Borders (1994)
North Country (nonfiction) (1997)
The Fall of the Year (1999)
The True Account (2003)
Waiting for Teddy Williams (2004)
On Kingdom Mountain (2007)
His characters are often quirky, reflecting the distinctive peculiarities of the region's taciturn residents.

He is the 1981 recipient of the Literature Award bestowed by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.

A Stranger In the Kingdom won the New England Book Award for Fiction in 1991, and was later filmed by director Jay Craven. Craven has also adapted Disappearances and Where the Rivers Flow North to film.

He received the Vermont Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts in 2006.<1>

Mosher taught English at Orleans High and Lake Region during his early years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Mosher

The tradition of excellent quirky teachers at Lake Region continues. There's an amazing emphasis on the arts for a small school in the backwoods. Much of that is due to the concentration of artists in the area- many of them nationally recognized. Of course, there are also some real duds and the red neck strain is pretty strong. I highly recommend Garret's two books about the school: "No Place But Here" is about his experience teaching there, "The God Of Beer" is young adult fiction.

[shadowknows69]

18. We were given the standard "Friendly natives gave feast in our honor" type crap

I had a couple good Social Studies teachers though who you could tell wouldn't whitewash things. Those are teachers you remember and should respect.

[roody]

22. It depends on the teacher. The state mandated

curriculum is still Euro-centric. They changed a few words.

[anonymous171]

23. Well, the Europeans did discover America.

Actually I see what you mean. If the Native Americans had built a boat and sailed all the way to Europe, we would say that "The Native Americans first arrived in Europe by boat in X" rather than "The Native Americans discovered Europe is X."

[anigbrowl]

34. Sort of...

If the Native Americans had had a similar level of technology to the Europeans the question would be moot. Nobody in Europe talks about people 'discovering China' because by the time Marco Polo got there the Chinese already had an advanced civilization. Not to put down Native Americans or anything, but it wasn't like they had mapped the country or built any sort of permanent infrastructure when the Europeans arrived.

[Johonny]

38. ?

The Native Americans had vast cities in central and South America. Their were more people living in the Americans than in Europe at the time. Their technological advancement was pretty good considering unlike Eurasia they were basically isolated and had limited ability to cultural exchange new ideas. They were also limited by the lack of pack animals in the Americas. Although they were greatly helped by the amount of food available in the Americas.

People don't talk about discovering China because the Mongols were at the time of Marco Polo invading most of Eurasia. Although people do talk about the final expansion of Chinese technology that followed this time period in Europe.

I really find nothing wrong with saying Columbus discovered the Americas. Clearly the actions of Columbus had significant effects that would quickly reached all over the world. No other earlier visitor had set off this type of global interaction.

[anigbrowl]

40. I was refering to North America particularly

Seeing as how the discussion was mostly about Columbus and schooling in the USA as opposed to Pizarro and various other explorers down south.

[The2ndWheel]

29. "America" was discovered, sure

The land mass, no.

[ogneopasno]

32. Depends on the curriculum they're following -- books, resources, etc.

[rucky]

37. I taught 5th Grade American History

by the book...

Starting with the Native Americans. Columbus was a bastard, as were most of the explorers. Colonists were no angels, either. The slavery/civil war unit was pretty intense, too. All in all, I think my kids got a pretty good overview of American History, and I didn't have to editorialize too much.

[Occam Bandage]

39. It wasn't first discovered by Europeans. Europeans did discover America in 1492,

just as I discovered sex when I was a teenager.