Picture this: you’re sitting in history class and your teacher is talking about something. You’re not quite paying attention, but you catch a few words every now and then. The teacher says: “Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492,” and you don’t think twice about it. You’ve known that for most of your life.
Well, school doesn’t teach you everything about history. In fact, Columbus never discovered anything. As everyone knows, the American school system is flawed in a few ways. For example, it fails to teach students about certain points in history. You don’t learn much about other cultures and their history. The school system victimizes America, when, in fact, we were often in the wrong in the past.
Our history class in school teaches us that Columbus discovered America with his three ships. They say he was some sort of hero for being the first person to find America, but it overlooks the fact that many indigenious and Native Americans already lived there.
Imagine this: you’re a Native American and a random European guy and his friends come to enslave your entire family. That’s right, they didn’t get along very well. Even though the indigenous people were willing to trade with the Europeans, Columbus only saw them as people that would make good servants.
Not only that, but Columbus popularized slavery. Yes, slavery existed before his time, but Columbus introduced it to a lot of the world. He wanted to show the Native Americans to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella back in Spain. They were undecided about slave trade in Spain, until they ultimately decided to free the slaves and ban it. This didn’t stop Columbus though. He still shipped slaves to different islands in America to work, and there is some evidence suggesting he was involved in African-American slave trading.
Schools also fail to teach you that the Trail of Tears wasn’t a good thing. It’s common for schools not to educate students fully on this topic, because they wanted Americans to seem like the “good guys.”
A lot of white settlers removed Native Americans by force. They resented the Native Americans, seeing them as people in the way. The white settlers wanted the land they lived on for themselves, believing that they deserved it. White Americans saw two solutions to this “problem”: either “civilize” the Native Americans, or force them out of the land they want.
There are so many reasons why both of these “solutions” were terrible. Selfishly, the white settlers believed that the land the Native Americans lived on was theirs for taking. They also thought that they weren’t “civilized,” because they had a different culture and religion. The most messed up thing about this situation is that many schools today teach their students that this was something peaceful. That White Americans did good by killing and removing Native Americans. It fails to mention the wars that took place. The disputes between white settlers and Native Americans could have ended if we had respected their culture.
Now think back to elementary school for a minute. On Thanksgiving, you probably made one of those paper Native American hats. If this was the school’s attempt on teaching you about culture, they failed miserably. Elementary schools specifically are indirectly racist and feed children misinformation. In children’s books, mostly about Thanksgiving, the Native Americans welcomed Columbus and the settlers with open arms. This was a lie, which we shouldn’t teach children. Like I said before, this point in history was bloody and violent, which is something we shouldn’t be teaching children in elementary schools either.
A lot of misinformation is spread in schools as history. They victimize us and tell students that we were always in the right, which we certainly were not. Our history classes also tend to focus on American history more than any other country, whether it’s relevant or not. The school system needs a lot of fixing. Elementary schools could be the first to start fixing these issues by simply teaching the truth in terms for younger kids to understand. They could teach children that Columbus wasn’t a good guy and that their land didn’t deserve to be stolen. This would be a great first step in the right direction to alter history classes to be more inclusive.