After reading the Christopher Columbus article by James Loewen, I began to question all the information I was taught in history classes I have taken and even other subjects too. It seems that many things we are taught in textbooks, are not the truth or actual facts we need to know, but instead a set of facts or ideas that “someone” or some group of people want us to know. Perhaps it is our govt. or educational leaders because they want us to grow up having certain similar values. I went through as I read the story about Christopher Columbus and wrote down thoughts or questions I had about why I thought our educators or govt. groups might do this....and for what reasons they believe it is their responsibility to do so. (instead of teaching the truth or other possibilities for what has happened throughout history). For one, books try to humanize Columbus in order to make his story more appealing to the public and less controversial. There are so many inconsistencies between books and also large amounts of information that disprove the accounts that are in our books, I find it incredible that we all believe anything that we read. It is almost as if schools or the govt…or whoever chooses to feed us these half true stories is out to trick us and force us to all believe as they do. Isn’t the point of education to teach us what is true…or how to determine the difference? Quite ironic isn’t it. It is also almost like the writers of textbooks are just too lazy to take the time to try to explain the facts, as unruly or shocking as they are. Not all of the true stories of history are that bad! They just need to be backed by substantial evidence in order to prove their relativeness and impact on our current society. I feel cheated though, thinking that there is probably soooo much more that I have been taught in school that is false or only half-true!
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