Posted on 10/12/2009 8:05:15 AM PDT by ConservativeStatement
TAMPA, Fla. - Jeffrey Kolowith’s kindergarten students read a poem about Christopher Columbus, take a journey to the New World on three paper ships, and place the explorer’s picture on a timeline through history.
Kolowith’s students learn about the explorer’s significance, but they also come away with a more nuanced picture of Columbus than the noble discoverer often portrayed in pop culture and legend.
“I talk about the situation where he didn’t even realize where he was,’’ Kolowith said. “And we talked about how he was very, very mean, very bossy.’’
Columbus’s stature in US classrooms has declined somewhat through the years, and many districts will not observe his namesake holiday today. Although lessons vary, many teachers are trying to present a more balanced perspective of what happened after Columbus reached the Caribbean and the suffering of indigenous populations.
“The whole terminology has changed,’’ said James Kracht, executive associate dean for academic affairs in the Texas A&M College of Education and Human Development. “You don’t hear people using the world ‘discovery’ anymore like they used to. ‘Columbus discovers America.’ Because how could he discover America if there were already people living here?’’
In Texas, students start learning in the fifth grade about the “Columbian Exchange,’’ which consisted not only of gold, crops, and goods shipped back and forth across the Atlantic Ocean, but also of diseases carried by settlers that decimated native populations.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Thanks for that. Waiting for incoming...
Morrison esteems Columbus the best dead-reckoning navigator that ever lived.
OHMIGAWD!
Maybe they won’t see it.
It was because the fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks meant Muslims now cut off Europe from Asia. All the known trade routes now went through Muslim controlled areas.
1492 was the year the last Berbers were expelled from Spain.
Interesting editorial on this at www.thequietconservative.com “Happy Columbus day” but the main points are above.
Columbus discovered America because of Islam. Over 500 years later it is still a threat to civilization.
Ever looked at Mexican TV? The politicians running Mexico? Almost all appear to be of European descent... no Indian mixed in them.
History is always a bit more complex than the Cliff Notes version.
And the history of latin america a lot more interesting than what most of us get in high school.
Slavery hung on quite late in Brazil, but throughout the rest of the continent, under pressure from the church, it died out.
You are right. Except in Argentina and that region, catholic settlers always intermarried rather freely with the indigenous, and their kids were brought up catholic.
Just as an aside, in Ecuador the blacks seem to fall generally into two cultural groups. One group, living in the highlands, are descended from a group protected by the jesuits. They tend to be very catholic and proper. The second group, descended from shipwrecked slaves who swam ashore and lived independently, have preserved some of their african roots. In Venezuela, something similar occurred; the africans didn’t remain slaves, but took off for the interior where they built their own communities back in the bush and lived independently.
Yes, it tends to be an elitist society. The guys at the top stay at the top. Mexico has quite a few billionaires and a lot of very poor people.
There used to be a similar social structure in Haiti, where the lightest skinned inhabitants with the most French blood formed an elite. I think the last revolution may have changed that, but I’m not really sure.
Very politically incorrect from the currently accepted American point of view. But so it is.
Yes, and as you say, in some parts, especially around the Carribean, blacks were imported from Africa to be slaves, since the Indians weren’t supposed to be enslaved.
You can find a picture of some of the consequences in V. S. Naipaul’s excellent autobiographical novel, “A House for Mr. Biswas.” Maybe his best book.
Sorry, in that Naipaul book there’s also the Indian Indians, imported by the Brits from India. My bad for citing it.
Where rule of law is weak, the only way to prosper is to have connections that will protect you from the vagaries and uncertainties of a vague and uncertain system.
If you have those connections, you are protected and can dare to invest. If you don't have those connections, you are unprotected and must seek to build those connections.
Centralized power and uncertain legal protections always guarantee oligarchy. Have a revolution to centralize the power even more in a supposed effort to get rid of the oligarchy, and you get more oligarchy. Because why? Because the people who are able to navigate an uncertain and politicized economy are the ones who prosper. Where the law doesn't protect you, you need to build personal relationships which will protect you.
When they gonna teach the darker side of the Clintons?
I care about the Indians, because they are people of God just like anyone else.
And look I agree with you about the whitewashing of Indian history. We’ll hear about the “darker side” of Columbus, but we WON’T hear about the darker side of the Iroquois Confederacy. That’s absolutely true. But I don’t want to hear any of the nonsense on the other side that Indians were simple barbarians as opposed to the cultured Europeans.
The French Jesuits *said themselves* that the Catholic Indians in the missions were *far* more devout and more fervent practitioners of the Christian religion than the native French. Read their accounts, and I dare you to disagree. The missionaries also talked about the Indians’ good qualities—like their magnanimity in hospitality—as well as their bad qualities (cannibalism) like you mention.
And I’m not so sure either that “contributing to the world” is a good metric by which to measure a culture. I’m 100% Italian. I know a little about culture that has “contributed to the world”...but that ain’t saving Italian culture right now from descending into the sewer as I think in some ways it is.
Give me a culture that, though obscure, is *good*. That’s the true measure. Of course, that’s a hard standard for any of us to live by: Iroquois, Anglo, or Italian.
Thank you. Well said.
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Substitute Germans for Indians and Romans for Europeans and you have perfectly described the situation in Europe circa 50 AD.
How many “Catholic Indians” would there have been?
It wasn't until the late 18th century that Portuguese settlers began bringing wives, an a large wave of immigration from Europe in the late 19th/early 20th century served to increase the population of whites in Brazil. Nevertheless, the fact that Brazil has a multi-racial plurality says more about the fact that white female immigration was nil in the first century and a half of settlement than anything else.
first male kindergarten teacher I’ve ever heard of
(that is, not counting the Governator in the movies...)
Good point. The difference was that the Conquistadores thought of themselves as conquerors, whereas the pilgrims thought of themselves as pilgrims or colonists.
They were not so much soldiers for the Spanish crown as we would now think of soldiers, but fighting entrepreneurs with followers who offered a deal to the Spanish crown: We’ll conquer the new world for Spain if you give us a fair share of the land and loot and let us enrich ourselves. In return we’ll give the crown land and loot.
The chief aim of the earliest Conquistadores was land, gold, and wealth. Many or most of them went with the intention of becoming rich and then returning to Spain eventually with their new wealth.
The Pilgrims wanted to get out from under English rule and worship according to their own preferences without a king or bishops to tell them what to do, which meant that they had an original intention of going, settling, and staying.
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