Some California Teachers Ditching Traditional Thanksgiving Lessons

Fox News - AP ^ | 11-22-06

[Indy Pendance]

LONG BEACH, Calif. — Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he "discovered" them.

The reaction is exactly what Morgan expects: The kids get angry and want their things back.

Morgan is among elementary school teachers who have ditched the traditional Thanksgiving lesson, in which children dress up like Indians and Pilgrims and act out a romanticized version of their first meetings.

He has replaced it with a more realistic look at the complex relationship between Indians and white settlers.

Morgan said he still wants his pupils at Cleveland Elementary School in San Francisco to celebrate Thanksgiving. But "what I am trying to portray is a different point of view."

Others see Morgan and teachers like him as too extreme.

"I think that is very sad," said Janice Shaw Crouse, a former college dean and public high school teacher and now a spokeswoman for Concerned Women for America, a conservative organization. "He is teaching his students to hate their country. That is a very distorted view of history, a distorted view of Thanksgiving."

Even American Indians are divided on how to approach a holiday that some believe symbolizes the start of a hostile takeover of their lands.

Chuck Narcho, a member of the Maricopa and Tohono O'odham tribes who works as a substitute teacher in Los Angeles, said younger children should not be burdened with all the gory details of American history.

"If you are going to teach, you need to keep it positive," he said. "They can learn about the truths when they grow up. Caring, sharing and giving — that is what was originally intended."

[concerned about politics]

When the Pilgrims first got to America, they decided to live as Socialists (known as left wing in America today) "to make it fair for everyone." Those who "found" a reason not to work - didn't. The others were forced to feed the rest. People were dying in great numbers. There wasn't enough food. Eventually they said "enough" and turned to self accountability, and there was such an abundance, they no longer needed to steal to survive. On the countrary, they then had enough to freely GIVE.

THIS is the part of the story the left wing Socialists leave out. They failed in the beginning due to "left wing policies", and that's where all the horror stories come from. The joyous feast held later came from getting rid of Socialism, which is why they're trying to bury that part of the story today.

Thank God we home school. Our kids get the whole story.

[longtermmemmory]

my understanding is that the indians really don't run the casinos, they have outsiders come in and do the actual casino stuff as "partners".

Like the Hard Rock corportation, Ballys Casino and the like...

Its a facy tax dodge for the corporate casinos.

[A_perfect_lady]

That's not teaching, that's aversion therapy. See this pilgrim hat? BAD!! BAD!!!

[Indy Pendance]

Funny how 'collectivism' is left out of it.

[A_perfect_lady]

The Maya had written language. I can't disagree with anything else you said, though.

[concerned about politics]

I'm sure he sees no problem with himself. I wouldn't want him teaching my children.

No wonder the people in California are so messed up. One look at their schools tells the whole story. Only a few ever make it to adulthood successfully (those are the Ca. FReepers).

[Aquinasfan]

Shoot, they took each other's land all the time and then skinned the owners alive.

Don't confuse us with the facts.

[Aquinasfan]

The writer should have put "realistic" in quotes, otherwise it looks like the story agrees with the idiots point of view.

I think AP agrees with the idiot.

[Gorzaloon]

I hope he's found with a flint arrow in him.

[concerned about politics]

The reaction is exactly what Morgan expects: The kids get angry and want their things back.

Wouldn't the liberals refer to that as "inhumane torture?" Where are the long haired, maggot infested left wing protesters?

[Jeffrey_D.]

"Thank God we home school. Our kids get the whole story"

Dittoes......here's Rush's story:


On August 1, 1620, the Mayflower set sail. It carried a total of 102 passengers, including forty Pilgrims led by William Bradford. On the journey, Bradford set up an agreement, a contract, that established just and equal laws for all members of the new community, irrespective of their religious beliefs. Where did the revolutionary ideas expressed in the Mayflower Compact come from? From the Bible. The Pilgrims were a people completely steeped in the lessons of the Old and New Testaments. They looked to the ancient Israelites for their example. And, because of the biblical precedents set forth in Scripture, they never doubted that their experiment would work.

"But this was no pleasure cruise, friends. The journey to the New World was a long and arduous one. And when the Pilgrims landed in New England in November, they found, according to Bradford's detailed journal, a cold, barren, desolate wilderness," destined to become the home of the Kennedy family. "There were no friends to greet them, he wrote. There were no houses to shelter them. There were no inns where they could refresh themselves. And the sacrifice they had made for freedom was just beginning. During the first winter, half the Pilgrims – including Bradford's own wife – died of either starvation, sickness or exposure.

"When spring finally came, Indians taught the settlers how to plant corn, fish for cod and skin beavers for coats." Yes, it was Indians that taught the white man how to skin beasts. "Life improved for the Pilgrims, but they did not yet prosper! This is important to understand because this is where modern American history lessons often end. "Thanksgiving is actually explained in some textbooks as a holiday for which the Pilgrims gave thanks to the Indians for saving their lives, rather than as a devout expression of gratitude grounded in the tradition of both the Old and New Testaments. Here is the part [of Thanksgiving] that has been omitted: The original contract the Pilgrims had entered into with their merchant-sponsors in London called for everything they produced to go into a common store, and each member of the community was entitled to one common share.

"All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belong to the community as well. They were going to distribute it equally. All of the land they cleared and the houses they built belonged to the community as well. Nobody owned anything. They just had a share in it. It was a commune, folks. It was the forerunner to the communes we saw in the '60s and '70s out in California – and it was complete with organic vegetables, by the way. Bradford, who had become the new governor of the colony, recognized that this form of collectivism was as costly and destructive to the Pilgrims as that first harsh winter, which had taken so many lives. He decided to take bold action. Bradford assigned a plot of land to each family to work and manage, thus turning loose the power of the marketplace.

"That's right. Long before Karl Marx was even born, the Pilgrims had discovered and experimented with what could only be described as socialism. And what happened? It didn't work! Surprise, surprise, huh? What Bradford and his community found was that the most creative and industrious people had no incentive to work any harder than anyone else, unless they could utilize the power of personal motivation! But while most of the rest of the world has been experimenting with socialism for well over a hundred years – trying to refine it, perfect it, and re-invent it – the Pilgrims decided early on to scrap it permanently. What Bradford wrote about this social experiment should be in every schoolchild's history lesson. If it were, we might prevent much needless suffering in the future.


"'The experience that we had in this common course and condition, tried sundry years...that by taking away property, and bringing community into a common wealth, would make them happy and flourishing – as if they were wiser than God,' Bradford wrote. 'For this community [so far as it was] was found to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine that they should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children without any recompense...that was thought injustice.' Why should you work for other people when you can't work for yourself? What's the point?

"Do you hear what he was saying, ladies and gentlemen? The Pilgrims found that people could not be expected to do their best work without incentive. So what did Bradford's community try next? They unharnessed the power of good old free enterprise by invoking the undergirding capitalistic principle of private property. Every family was assigned its own plot of land to work and permitted to market its own crops and products. And what was the result? 'This had very good success,' wrote Bradford, 'for it made all hands industrious, so as much more corn was planted than otherwise would have been.' Bradford doesn't sound like much of a..." I wrote "Clintonite" then. He doesn't sound much like a liberal Democrat, "does he? Is it possible that supply-side economics could have existed before the 1980s? Yes.

"Read the story of Joseph and Pharaoh in Genesis 41. Following Joseph's suggestion (Gen 41:34), Pharaoh reduced the tax on Egyptians to 20% during the 'seven years of plenty' and the 'Earth brought forth in heaps.' (Gen. 41:47) In no time, the Pilgrims found they had more food than they could eat themselves.... So they set up trading posts and exchanged goods with the Indians. The profits allowed them to pay off their debts to the merchants in London. And the success and prosperity of the Plymouth settlement attracted more Europeans and began what came to be known as the 'Great Puritan Migration.'" Now, other than on this program every year, have you heard this story before? Is this lesson being taught to your kids today -- and if it isn't, why not?

Can you think of a more important lesson one could derive from the pilgrim experience? So in essence there was, thanks to the Indians, because they taught us how to skin beavers and how to plant corn when we arrived, but the real Thanksgiving was thanking the Lord for guidance and plenty -- and once they reformed their system and got rid of the communal bottle and started what was essentially free market capitalism, they produced more than they could possibly consume, and they invited the Indians to dinner, and voila, we got Thanksgiving, and that's what it was: inviting the Indians to dinner and giving thanks for all the plenty is the true story of Thanksgiving. The last two-thirds of this story simply are not told.

[ErnBatavia]

Screwing up Columbus Day didn't satisfy some appetites, it appears.

[auto power]

Wonder if this idiot teacher also tells his class that the red states are more charitable and compassionate than the blue states....

[Nea Wood]

After all, I believe that we are now experiencing the same invasion of our culture as the Indians did at that time.....different circumstances, but certainly the same feelings as we watch everything we love and value fade away.

Well put. We're told that it was so evil and wrong for the white man to come to the Indians' land and settle and replace the Indians' customs and ways. Yet, when tens of millions of illegal aliens sneak across our borders now, we are told that we should welcome the "reconquista" and that we are being "enriched."

[Indy Pendance]

Or Christmas, or Halloween, or the 4th of July.... Seems the only holiday that's 'protected' is MLK Day.

[Alouette]

snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he "discovered" them.

Colonists paid for Manhattan in a perfectly acceptable transaction.

[napscoordinator]

Morgan is among elementary school teachers who have ditched the traditional Thanksgiving lesson, in which children dress up like Indians and Pilgrims and act out a romanticized version of their first meetings.

We did not do this at our school. I do believe we went to church on Wednesday morning. (Catholic School). I just think that people put to much into these activities. That teacher taking pencils to teach what the indians felt is really bizzar. I don't even know how he could have thought of that. Oh by the way, during our Christmas Children's mass (Santa made a visit). I bet that would make liberals shiver and worry...lol.

[concerned about politics]

Dittoes......here's Rush's story:

I gather my kids around to hear it every year. It's become a tradition.

[SoCal Pubbie]

The guy's not much of a history teacher:

"THE GATHERING STORM CLOUDS OF DISTRUST

The peace born of mutual support and trust eventually eroded. Another plague-the small pox epidemic of 1633-34-swept away thousands of Algonquins and made more land available. Only between fifteen to eighteen thousand Native People still survived in all of New England. Meanwhile, the expanding colonial towns were bulging with the new arrivals, eager to start claiming and clearing their own piece of America.

LAND DISPUTES

Land transfer was not a simple matter. The colonial laws guarded the rights of the natives. Only through qualified agents could purchases be made. Interpreters must be present, as well as several witnesses for both parties. The Indian owner or his family must be present for the formal signing, for unlike communal tribal lands of the western Indians, much of the land was owned by individual tribesmen. Finally, the sachem must also add his mark if he were in agreement. If all this puzzled the land-rich warrior, he may have been aware of his rights under English law. And when all was said and done, he generally retained his right to hunt and fish on the property. To the twentieth century mind, trade goods seems a small price to pay for a slice of real estate. But values must be interpreted as to time and place, and the Algonquin was certain he had the best of the bargain. In 1675, a full-scale war erupted between the increasing number of colonists and the Indians. Now known as King Phillip's War, after the name of the Massasoit's son, who was then chief, the clash lasted eleven years and caused great destruction on both sides.

The Wampanoag were defeated, and peaceful relations between the two groups were forever shattered.

The peaceful relations between the Pilgrims and Indians had lasted 54 years, during the lifetimes of the Massasoit and the original members of Plymouth Colony."

http://www.rootsweb.com/~mosmd/

[ChocChipCookie]

My homeschooled kids get "the whole story", too. We recently spent a lot of time studying Indians, and it was a challenge to present both sides of the story. Two facts were most important. First, the formation of the United States was absolutely part of God's plan. Second, God's will was never that white people should treat Indians cruelly or unjustly -- and vice versa. We talked about the greed of many white settlers and how wrong that was. Even though my dd is only 7, I think she ended up with a well-rounded education on this subject. As she gets older, we'll revisit it often, I'm sure.