Did Columbus 'discover' America? Teachers re-examine how history is taught

NBC News ^ | August 8, 2020 | Daniella Silva

[C19fan]

Educators from around the country have been reflecting on what they teach and how they teach it in the wake of the death of George Floyd and the national protests that followed.

Some lessons up for reconsideration: the dismissive take that it was simply "the norm" that Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves in the late 1700s and language around Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of America.

[CIB-173RDABN]

Columbus may not have been the first, but at least when he found the new Continent, it stayed found.

[ronnie raygun]

Funny how they depict the indigenous peoples as peace loving. More revisionist history for those who refuse to read and ask questions

[carcraft]

Columbus discovered the America’s for the Europeans. It is sort of like when you tell your friends “ my wife and I discover this Resturant “. Now if you are a Karen if the grammar police you immediately say, “ how did you discover it when waitresses and waiters, cooks and customers were already there”!

[Midwesterner53]

Discovered it for the rest of the world. Feel better now?

[a fool in paradise]

The same people who championed Stalin’s gulags

[a fool in paradise]

10 years ago California Democrats changed the law that prohibited communists and seditionists from teaching in California schools, and this is the result.

[Maris Crane]

WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE IN WHO DISCOVERED IT...THE VIKINGS, THE HUGENOTS, THE MINIONS...

Who, Who, was the one who DID something about the discovery.

One can find a diamond on the pavement and do NOTHING about it.

But, one can find a diamond and make it into something.

THAT’S the Columbus difference.

[BunnySlippers]

And the Teachers Union is the most craven and depraved entity anywhere!

[SauronOfMordor]

A husband can “discover” his wife’s affair, even though the two participants already knew about it.

[submarine571]

And let us not forget that Columbus “Discovered” the world was not flat — even though it already was...

[rfreedom4u]

Native Americans also engaged in slavery and cannibalism and torture. Why is that never pointed out?

[LS]

By far the best scholarship on Columbus is a massive book, “Columbus: Then and Now,” which frequently, after looking at great amounts of contradictory evidence, will say, “but we really don’t know for sure.”

I think this is admirable. If a historian cannot decide based on all available evidence, it’s ok to form a hypothesis, but keep it just at that.

[Czech_Occidentalist]

Does Greenland count as part of America? There was a Catholic diocese in Greenland from the 12th to the 14th century. The civilized world definitely knew that Greenland existed.

[a fool in paradise]

Because you’re using western norms of what civilization is make unfair moral judgments

[cotton1706]

That’s a huge island. And apparently nobody traveled to the southern tip and then beyond to North America (or at least didn’t report it to anybody of significance until after 1492).

[yuleeyahoo]

[yuleeyahoo]

“If you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, then you don't know where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going, you're probably going wrong.” ― Terry Pratchett

[Vision]

It's amazing that one (out of 50 a year) death of a citizen in police custody has exposed the Left’s agenda to fundamentally transform America. The Left are traitors.

[Vision]

Yes, Columbus discovered America.

[butlerweave]

America discovered Columbus