Posted on 10/12/2009 6:48:09 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Christopher Columbus' stature in U.S. classrooms has declined somewhat through the years, and many districts will not observe the explorer's namesake holiday on Monday.
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 diseases carried by settlers that decimated native populations.
In McDonald, Pennsylvania, 30 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, fourth-grade students at Fort Cherry Elementary put Columbus on trial this year - charging him with misrepresenting the Spanish crown and thievery. They found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison.
"In their own verbiage, he was a bad guy," teacher Laurie Crawford said.
Of course, the perspective given varies across classrooms and grades. Donna Sabis-Burns, a team leader with the U.S. Department of Education's School Support and Technology Program, surveyed teachers nationwide about the Columbus reading materials they used in class for her University of Florida dissertation. She examined 62 picture books, and found the majority were outdated and contained inaccurate - and sometimes outright demeaning - depictions of the native Taino population.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsnews.com ...
I read this interesting post :
If you ever want to read any eye opening book “An UNDERGROUND EDUCATION” by Richard Zacks is it. Page 347 states “Columbus rightly deserves credit for many firsts, but one of his first has been routinely overlooked in Americn textbooks. Christopher Columbus was the “first slave trader” in the New World.
He returned from his first voyage with ten live Indians he had kidnapped, and these were paraded along with parrots through the streets and road of Spain.
Because it was discovered by an advanced culture that was able to actually DO something with the land. After thousands of years of habitation by people who were still living in the stone age in the age of the Enlightenment has earned Columbus the honor of having discovered the new world.
If you like the idea of people in the Americas living above a stone age level, due to the transplant of European culture and ideas, then he’s a hero. He’s a villain if you just hate Whitey but don’t have the balls to say it.
These Indians were scalping their enemies and enslaving each other’s tribes routinely during the time Columbus discovered America.
Ole Chris eventually got in dutch with the Spanish for his exploits (IIRC he came back in chains the second time).
And so what. Any good or damage he did was miniscule compared with what followed when regular voyages to the New World began. Some were hostile to the natives, some friendly. National wars spread to the New World. People behaved like... people. These liberals might want to think twice whether they really would have been so angelic themselves under the circumstances.
He was a devout man of prayer. The garbage that continues to impugn this man seeks to destroy all the remarkable feats he was able to accomplish.
I am teaching my kids about his strong Catholic faith and that times were certainly different then. More than that but I don’t want to go over our entire curriculum! :0)
Ask the kiddies this. The Aztecs murdered 20,000 people a year, so was it good or bad that they were defeated?
Oh, what would it have been like to have been a fly on the bulkhead in Columbus’ ships.
Some content has been unfortunately lost to mankind. A monk wrote a second hand rendition of Columbus’ personal diaries and we do have that. There might have been some motivation to minimize the ugly and maximize the beautiful, as might happen when talking about any religious man’s checkered mortal life from which lessons might be taught. It would certainly have needed a man of faith to carry out a mission of such risk and uncertainty.
Were they offered this as a bargain to keep their lives rather than be killed for their own acts? This is not clear to me.
In 1492 Columbus rediscovered a land populated by savage stone age natives continually engaged in genocidal warfare against their neighbors. Four hundred years later as the American frontier closed, the savagery and genocidal aspects of the natives was no more but they were still stone age having never in four centuries figured out how to copy and make anything of the Europeans.
**Yes, but does it justify kidnapping 10 of them and then bringing them back to Europe against their will ? ***
And yet, whe Verizano went ahead of his men to contact Indians they promptly killed him, cooked him, and ate him.
The native Taino people of the island were systematically enslaved and murdered. Hundreds were rounded up and shipped to Europe to be sold; many died en route. For the rest of the population, Columbus demanded that all Taino under his control should bring the Spaniards gold.
Those who didn’t were to have their hands cut off. Since there was, in fact, little gold to be had, the Taino fled, and the Spaniards hunted them down and killed them. The Taino tried to mount a resistance, but the Spanish weaponry was superior, and European diseases ravaged their population. In despair, the Taino engaged in mass suicide, even killing their own children to save them from the Spaniards. Within two years, half of what may have been 250,000 Taino were dead.
The remainder were taken as slaves and set to work on plantations, where the mortality rate was very high. By 1550, 60 years after Columbus landed, only a few hundred Taino were left on their island. In another hundred years, perhaps only a handful remained.
***Ask the kiddies this. The Aztecs murdered 20,000 people a year, so was it good or bad that they were defeated?***
Ask the kiddies this. The Aztecs murdered (AND ATE) 20,000 people a year, so was it good or bad that they were defeated?
There. Fixed it for you..
Montezuma was fond of cooked young boys.
***These Indians were scalping their enemies and enslaving each other’s tribes routinely during the time Columbus discovered America****
Proof..
http://www.dickshovel.com/scalp.html
If this story you tell me about the Taino people is true, then we should re-assess the character of Columbus himself. He might be a great explorer, but let’s not go overboard praising him as a man to emulate in term of the goodness of his heart.
Roman Catholic or not, what he did was clearly UNCHRISTIAN.
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