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 ...
That's the problem with these people, they don't understand the American concept or appreciate the opportunities of what a truly free country offers.
We're not special, in fact we're the problem in the world, I am so sick of this.
“He was very mean, very bossy”
There can be only ONE captain of a ship.
This kid will be a very poor employee. He thinks no one should be the boss.
Who cares about the Indians? Not me. They were a group of barbarians, in some cases cannibals, who constantly fought against competing tribes well before the Europeans showed up. Lefty weasels and fruits attempt to portray these barbarians as ‘peace-loving, spiritual people’ when in actuality they killed and mutilated each other while battling for the same turf they ultimately lost to the Europeans. They have contributed very little to the world, in any way, and it’s an overall positive that this great land was settled by people with more ability and virtue.
You’ll never see these libs mess with “Arbor Day”! :)
“and the indiginous people didn’t have the wheel.”
And since I was born in the U.S.A. (of European descent), I’m indiginous too, right. And indignant!
Let's go back many, many centuries. A lot of folks think that the Barbarian Invasions which toppled Rome were a series of military campaigns. Not so. Yes, there were battles, but mostly it was a mass migration of peoples with a different culture. The Mediterranean culture of Caesar, Cicero, and Vergil was overwhelmed by an outside culture that had different values.
This is what we see happening to us today.
One moment in the movie 1492 that I liked...
Columbus confronts his persecutor and says, what you can never change is the fact that I did it. And you didn’t.
We went to school not very far apart. When I was in kindergarten in PS 45 in South Ozone Park in 1955-56, about 90% of my classmates were descendants of slaves and I cannot recall how Columbus Day was covered. When I moved on to Christ the King in Springfield Gardens a couple years later, we had a high “last name ending in vowel” factor, though most of the sisters were Irish. Columbus was, nonetheless, a good Catholic and not in the least bit a Protestant and therefore a good person.
Kindergarten?? That teacher needs horse whipped.
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He would likely enjoy that.
Gee....Sounds just like what I told my grandchildren...And I have indian friends...
The NEA and TEACHERS SHOULD LOVE COLUMBUS...
Columbus was the PERFECT DEMOCRAT!
He did not know where he was Going.
When he got back, he could NOT SAY where he’d been.
And He did it ALL with a GOVERNMENT GRANT!
They might want to teach the darker side of the Obamaloon.
(And libs, please don’t try the racist stuff...this is not referring to his color. Your guy is a commie idiot, pure and simple.)
Ah, maybe that's because of the limited capability of navigation, measuring, and mapping equipment of the day.
Columbus, a brilliant thinker and mathematician had calculated from all equipment and observations available to him, that the Earth was spherical, but calculated a circumference about 30% smaller than the actual circumference. It was an astounding accomplishment for the day.
Arriving after a difficult voyage and expecting Asia, nothing matched, but it only took a couple days, still in his exhausted state, to figure out that he had DISCOVERED an unknown continent and recalculate with 95% accuracy.
My daughter thought Columbus was a pirate. That’s what her teacher told her, she said.
Yeah, the Captain of an expedition into the absolute unknown, with zero recon, needs to be a Nancy Pants.
As admiral of the fleet, with a royal appointment, no doubt he should have taken a vote every day as to what they should do next.
"Ay, caramba, Capitano! Turn back! We is about to fall off the edge of the world!"
An exchange Sunday with my eldest son got me to thinking (a rare feat, indeed).
He asked if tomorrow was a holiday. I responded that it’s Columbus Day. Sensitive and bright guy that he is, he came back – half joking — with “Don’t you mean Oppression of Indigenous Peoples Day?”
He and I have debated the matter of the government’s treatment of the American Indian many times. He takes the position that we badly mistreated these original and mostly warrior inhabitants of what we now call America. I agree with him that, sadly, by violating treaties, marching them off to barren reservations, etc. we have done that, but I also reminded him that throughout history, with precious few exceptions, when two cultures have clashed, the one with the superior and more advanced technology usually prevailed.
That brought to mind a warning Mr. Jefferson issued over 2 centuries ago that “Those who beat their swords into plowshares will plow for those who do not.”
And THAT brought to my alleged mind Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize.
“Peace” has several definitions:
1. The absence of war or conflict and the necessary presence of justive. (A desirable but, according to Scripture practically unattainable goal.)
2. The absence of RESISTANCE to efforts by utopian elitists to destroy traditional national sovereignty and blend all the nations of the world into some bizarre socialistic New World Order where all will be equal – but SOME will be more equal than others.
Obama received the nomination after less than two weeks in office. The Nobel socialists apparently listened to his campaign speeches more intently than the American electorate. It seems they understood what he was well before the election.
I’m 100% convinced that the Nobel was his reward for promoting a “peace” meeting not the first definition — but the second.
Obama’s constant apologies, his repeated remarks about our unexceptionalism coupled with his rapid moves to weaken – indeed, CRIPPLE – the United States in an increasingly dangerous and envious world more than confirmed the Nobel socialists’ fond hopes. And if anyone still thinks he’s simply a naïve fool, you’ve not been paying attention. He – and his global elitist handlers – know PRECISELY what they are doing.
Which brings me back to the clash between native Americans and the technologically superior Europeans who ultimately overwhelmed them.
At what point will WE assume the role of those early natives when some technologically superior culture – made so by endless streams of “foreign aid,” technology transfers and outright theft of that technology from the global corporations who site plants in those would-be foes for the cheap labor — determines that we are ripe for conquest?
What’s even sadder is the probability that America’s obituary – if anyone who cares is around then to even write one — will declare the death of our culture a suicide.
“Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and the Republic
for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster, and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail,
there will be anarchy throughout the world.”
Daniel Webster
Get ready, folks, because that’s where we’re headed.
Of course.
We used to read in all our history books that the Spanish Conquistadores were evil men who killed off all the Indians. Whereas the American Puritans were good men.
Catholics were evil, Protestants were good & noble. That was the basic story line, inherited from England and what has been called The Black Legend of the evil Spanish Catholics, the Inquisition, and so forth.
A couple of years ago someone, usually an intelligent guy, said as much to me at dinner one day. His assumption was that the Spanish enslaved and slaughtered their Indians whereas we were nice to ours.
Then how come, I asked, the Spanish intermarried with the Indians, and most of the inhabitants of Latin America are mostly of Indian ancestry? Whereas in North America there are relatively few Indians, and there has been relatively little intermarriage?
In actual fact, the Pope outlawed slavery, and after the earliest days the Conquistadores reluctantly complied. And most of the Indians later converted—largely by the influence of Our Lady of Guadalupe—and became at least nominal Catholics, giving up human sacrifice and other similar customs they used to practice. So, yes, there are a few relatively pure-bred hispanics still left at the top of the social food chain, but not really very many. Most are more Indian than Hispanic.
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