Our story begins in the year 1492 when “explorer” Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue and proceeded to ruin everything. Fast forward to 2001 when I am in kindergarten learning about the “hero” Columbus and his crew sailing on three ships to discover America. Fast forward again to now, when I am in college and work at a school where a young child asks me to read her a book about the “Great Christopher Columbus” and his “amazing journey.”
Flipping through the pages, I see the story align with everything I learned in grade school about the supposed brave sailor whose expedition lead to the discovery of North America. It is utterly painful to read to the kid - I have to stop halfway through to stop myself from blurting out, “He didn’t find anything! He was looking for a way to get to Asia and landed in the Caribbean instead. He never even saw America, so it doesn’t make any sense that America used to be called Columbia or that we celebrate him every year. He was only looking for gold, barely found any, destroyed the Native Americans who were there long before anyone from Europe, and what he did there led to the genocide of an entire civilization.”
The little girl looks up at me with naive eyes and asks me to keep reading. She doesn't know the truth, doesn't think about why Columbus Day is even a holiday. Another child who joined us also asks that I continue because he knows we’re getting to the good part about when Columbus meets the “Indians” and when he finds the “treasure.” Thankfully, their parents come to pick them up before the miseducation can continue.
Why do schools still teach that story to young students? Children can learn about how the British oppressed colonists so the Revolutionary War had to happen and how the evil Nazis wanted to exterminate the Jews, but they can’t know that what Columbus did led to the deaths of thousands of Native Americans and set the precedent for how poorly they were treated in later years? There is a larger narrative that dominates elementary education and constitutes lying to students. It is an issue of maintaining the illusion of American “birthright” to basically everything. There is the underlying concept that “The founders of this country worked hard for their freedom and suffered through many hardships, so all Americans can get whatever they want.” There were many Americans who did work hard, faced tremendous obstacles, and exhibited extreme bravery - but not Columbus, and not the explorers and conquistadors like him.
Even the Thanksgiving narrative is something teachers have to lie to students about: The Pilgrims and Native Americans shared a wonderful feast and made peace on this day. Even if there was a moment of peace between the two peoples, what had come before that and what came after? What happened to the famous Squanto who had so generously helped the Pilgrims during their time of need? He was captured and taken to England as a slave. I never learned that fact in grade school and the children I work with don’t learn it either.
Every American person I learned about in Social Studies was automatically, without question, a hero and a patriot. Whereas, we could never be sure where a foreigner stood. Because they were not American, there was always the potential that they could be a traitor. We were taught to be suspicious of non-Americans from a young age which has translated over into our nation's problems with immigrants. This is the wrong way to educate students, especially young ones. It makes no sense to teach important values and lessons like “Everyone makes mistakes” and “No one is perfect,” but then teach that America is flawless and all the bad things that happened throughout history were done to us and not by us.
Teaching is especially about altering a child’s perspective. A student should learn what happened, not what we like to imagine happened. It makes more sense to disrupt the fantasy at an early age than to create a jaded, cynical individual like so many millennials who learned too late that America is responsible for some of the greatest destruction the world has ever seen. We found out that the country we claim is "the best" is actually one of the worst, and think all our previous education was a sick capitalist conspiracy, and some of it definitely was.
Some people’s feelings are going to be hurt, kids will question what they thought was true, but in the end no one will have been manipulated into having false ideas of superiority over other races and nations. If we teach that America has been wrong, maybe then we can start to make it right.
