Need to plan a last minute cruise do ya?
Confusion About Columbus
Happy Columbus Day! Even though Columbus actually landed in the Bahamas. Venemous Kate’s post touches a bit on what our school systems need to know about celebrating Columbus Day. Interesting! I am wondering why the heck I am celebrating Columbus day. It doesn’t sound like he was a very nice person.
I learn more stuff from fellow bloggers. I wonder what other information I learned in school that is wrong. I know they leave out a lot of important things. Maybe school prepares us for the real world. You know, the one where we stick our heads in the sand.
In fairness, a lot of things were done by people a few hundred years ago that we’d be disgusted by now, yet they also were part of what brought us here today.
I don’t think anyone pretends that Columbus landed here and was a founding father or something… His legacy is that he “discovered” the “New World” (i.e. this hemisphere). Of course we now have evidence that the Vikings (among others) did this notably earlier than he did, but most were completely unaware of this, so his discovery (and what followed) was one of the biggest moments in history, period.
Some of our founding fathers had slaves… Should we all throw on anarchy t-shirts, tie scarves around our faces, and start vandalizing government buildings? Find any culture that is “innocent”.
Native cultures from the Americas took part in a lot of human sacrifice, prior to the arrival of “the white man”. Do we condemn them? No, we praise them and want to learn about their intriguing history, which led them to where they are today. But we have some sort of self-hate that forces us to need to bash those icons that brought us to where we are today.
Blech.
That is a very interesting perspective. I think I will print that out and keep that in mind. I would rather think on the lines that you mention than concentrate on the negativity. Thanks for your well put comment.
No problem, Karen. And to be clear, I didn’t mean to come off like a jerk (if I did). I sort of unloaded in that comment and it wasn’t directed at you really, just sort of venting my frustration with something I see happening too often.