Should schools bother to mention the year 1492 and the name "Columbus"?

[Boojatta]

If Polynesians on each of various islands in the Southern Pacific Ocean had preserved and passed on over the generations a year (in some system of dating) and the name of an early Polynesian navigator who arrived on that island in that year, then would that knowledge now be valuable?

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. Well it is recorded history

what should we forget next? Oh and the AGE of exploration is a BIG DEAL in western history.

[Mojambo]

2. Should be more focus on Henry the Navigator and less on Columbus

Although Columbus certainly shouldn't be forgotten

[nadinbrzezinski]

7. They are both as important

in fact Raleigh and the rest of THAT crew, are not given enough emphasis. By the way Gilbert makes Columbus look like a non conniving guy.

[leftstreet]

3. Zinn's 'A People's History..' should be required reading for students

A People's History of the United States is a 1980 non-fiction book by late American historian and political scientist Howard Zinn. In the book, Zinn seeks to present American history through the eyes of the common people rather than political and economic elites.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People's_History_of_the_United_States

[csziggy]

4. Columbus and the other European explorers/comquerors set up colonial expansion

Which pretty much gives a direct line to the global corporation expansion of today. Corporations helped push the exploitation of entire nations and the genocide of millions all over the world from shortly after 1492 until now.

Of course, schools will glorify Columbus and tell their myths about him instead of teaching the truth.

[On the Road]

5. Columbus Should be Taught Differently, Perhaps,

but his discovery of the New World was a pretty earth-shattering event for both hemispheres.

[Drunken Irishman]

6. We should bother to mention it because it was an important development in the western world...

With that said, we shouldn't gloss over the facts and teach the history as it really happened - which isn't necessarily flattering toward Columbus.

[jobycom]

8. Yes, but the story should be told correctly.

Columbus wasn't an explorer--more and more we realize that most sailors knew there was a land across the Atlantic, and roughly how far away it was, even if they had not really journeyed out of their way to get there--he was a fortune seeker. He landed on Hispaniola specifically to set up plantations and find gold and whatever riches he could take. His first voyage back to Spain included slaves he had kidnapped. He brought equipment and livestock to farm and to conquer. There's no question now, and there really wasn't any question in the past until Columbus was redeemed as part of our Founder's myth, why Columbus came here.

The whole thing about Columbus being an explorer and sailors believing the world was flat and all of that was created in the 1800s to justify our taking the lands from the Native Americans as we were killing them off and driving them onto smaller and smaller patches of land. Rewriting Columbus's history to make him seem like a heroic explorer who came across a land of half-savages and began trying to convert them to Christianity (myths that still linger) made Europeans seem more like the rightful heirs, the discoverers of a vacant land--vacant except the animal-people that both Columbus and 19th century Americans had to kill off. Europeans and their white burden and racial superiority were the good guys, and "Indians" had to be killed for their own good.

But yeah, the wars and slavery and exploitation and disease that Columbus brought was a critical moment in world history. Columbus was significant. He just wasn't a hero. Estimates have him killing or driving off anywhere between one million and seven million people within his first four years on the island. That's a significant fact that needs to be taught.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Where to start?

Oh yes... they knew the world was not flat, that was pretty elite knowledge.

No, they did not know there was a whole new world on the other side... why they spent oh 100 years inventing the concept of America... since this was a continent that was never mentioned in things like oh the Bible, or the Dialogues. So this helped, in a way, to break from the ancient authorities. See O'Gorman, La Invencion de America and Richard Tarnas's The Passion of the Western Mind, or if you insist on PRIMARY sources, A New Cannan is required reading.

Your last paragraph is our modern version of the Black Legend.

Nobody is going to deny it... see Luis Portilla the reverse of the conquest, for example... but there is a big difference between the American Black Legend and what actually happened, which is partly to justify OUR exceptionanlism. We were not as bad as Spain you see, which was pretty self critical from the word go, see Sahagun's chronicle.

History is far more complex than people think at times.

[jobycom]

13. Where to start... deux...

Any sailor knew it wasn't flat. Whether a peasant on a farm thought it was just depended on whether he'd bothered to learn it.

Whether they knew there was a whole new continent or just a plain old continent (India), Columbus knew there was land over there because the sailors he sailed with and hung around with in the Canary Islands knew there was land over there. There are records of the Irish talking about it, of the Muslims in North Africa talking about it, and of other ship captains writing about signs of the land in their logs. They wrote about land birds when they got far enough to the west, and about debris in the water, and about all the other signs that would tell them there was land. Columbus and the sailors of the Atlantic knew the land was there, they just had had no reason to go there.

When Columbus landed, he was equipped for farming, so he wasn't planning just to look around. He expected to find land. He came equipped, on very small ships. He set up plantations immediately, according to his own accounts. He wrote about trading pre-pubescent native girls to his men to keep them happy.

History is complicated, that's why I spent so many years in grad school studying it. Dead bodies aren't complicated. The motivations of the people who made them dead might be, but the dead part isn't. I gave a range between the low and the high population numbers because there is obviously much dispute. But some things aren't in dispute. Columbus was a brutal man. He wrote in his journals about his actions. The disease that spread across the Americas isn't imaginary--explorers ran into remnants of villages all over. Pizarro and Cortez later took advantage of plagues in their conquests. The entire lifestyle of the Americas, however populated it was, was disrupted, and high percentages of the people died.

Columbus can't be blamed directly for all the effects of his landing, but to not talk about him is wrong. He didn't discover America, but he was the first to show how the Americas could be exploited for profit. His actions were deliberate, and they shocked even his contemporaries. He was a convenient Romulus and Remus for us in the 19th century, but there isn't much he represents anymore that we should be proud of. The myth needs to be rewritten.

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. Yes they knew it wasn't flat

that is not in discussion. Brennan's supposed sailing or Leif Ericksons well documented sailing has nothing to do with Columbus's charts. His charts did not have America anywhere. He was convinced, the day he died, that he found the Leeward Islands of Japan.

We both spent, I suspect, the same numbers of years in college. Again, read the accounts OF THE PERIOD. They had to invent this new continent... they had to explain where these people came from... ten lost tribes of Israel, why I referred to Morton's New Canaan. That one is in English. Sahagun and Mtolinia had similar ideas on Meso America.

As to the myth, where do you want to start the rewriting of US History? We could start with the idea that this was not a nation founded on freedom... not when one third came from indentured servants or were servants themselves, a form of slavery.

But we also do not need to insert things that fit our modern view of the world, but go against the 16th century idea of HAVING to invent a new world.

[grahamhgreen]

9. No. History started when Reagan was elected.

[Dogmudgeon]

10. Yes -- with a different context

Columbus opened the New World for European development. Contrary to several of the responses, most school curricula describe his bad points and good alike. His brutality and religiomania are well-attested.

And nearly all kids know about Leif Erikson. Some have even heard of Brendan of Ireland. A few in New England and South Carolina learn that Basque sailors were trading with Narragansett and Choctaw Indians in the 1300s and most of the 1400s.

There was a Chinese "discovery" in the early 1400s, IIRC.

The American Indians, of course, are either the REAL discoverers of the New World, or the heirs to (an) earlier group(s). At least five haplogroups are known among the Native Americans. There are also old remains in South America that are basically Polynesian.

Either way, the Europeans simply came later. .

The American Indians, of course, are either the REAL discoverers of the New World, or the heirs to (an) earlier group(s). At least five haplogroups are known among the Native Americans. There are also old remains in South America that are basically Polynesian.

Either way, the Europeans simply came later.

That may also be modified. It turns out that there are a lot of similarities between Aurignacian (France) and Clovis (New Mexico) cultural artifacts, as well as a few isolated finds in New England. The finds are quite controversial because they are rare, but it's probably going to be a fertile field of research.

And, of course, pre-Clovis peoples existed; one major pre-Clovis find could completely re-write American archeology.

Most kids love archeology and ancient history. It would be very easy to teach this, even in the early grades.

That may also be modified. It turns out that there are a lot of similarities between Aurignacian (France) and Clovis (New Mexico) cultural artifacts, as well as a few isolated finds in New England. The finds are quite controversial because they are rare, but it's probably going to be a fertile field of research.

And, of course, pre-Clovis peoples existed; one major pre-Clovis find could completely re-write American archeology.

Most kids love archeology and ancient history. It would be very easy to teach this, even in the early grades.

--d!

[texastoast]

12. What year did the Knights Templar make it over?

Earlier than Columbus by about a 100 years, I think.