Why Is Christopher Columbus Wrong

588 Words2 Pages

Lies. That’s what is being coaxed into the brains of America’s children every single year near October 12th. Although Christopher Columbus may have sailed the ocean blue in 1492 and landed in the Bahamas, he was not the first European to cross the Atlantic and the noble hero he is depicted as in elementary schools across America is distant from the true reality of his character. Moreover, the course of American education retaining to Christopher Columbus must be shifted. The education curriculum should not mention him at all during the usual first and fifth grade years, but rather wait until tenth grade when students can fully comprehend the facts around his not so gallant nature. Ultimately, the deeds of the genuine Christopher Columbus …show more content…

These youngsters will realize later in their academic career that they were betrayed by their teachers who taught them falsities and shaded them from the truth. Furthermore, Columbus did not truly discover the Americas. In 1000, Leif Erikson, a Norse seafarer from Scandinavia, settled a colony near L’Anse aux Meadows in present-day Newfoundland. Erikson was not backed by a powerful nation (like Columbus was) and consequently, the Scandinavians abandoned their feeble settlement. Likewise, if the Native Americans are discounted for discovering America, the first European to truly arrive at the America's first was not Christopher Columbus, but rather Leif Erikson. However that falsehood is not as hefty as being told Columbus lived in harmony with the Native Americans and then discovering the absolute truth in tenth grade. Upon meeting the Native Americans (who he called Indians for he thought he was in the Indies in Asia), he described them as “naive” and even stated in his journal how “They would make fine servants”. Soon after becoming acquainted with them, Spaniards enslaved Native Americans and forced them to find obscenely large amounts of gold. If Native Americans did not reach the impossibly immense gold quota, their hands

Show More
Related

  • The Myint Author Of Christopher Columbus: Hero Or Villain?

    821 Words  | 2 Pages

    Many books have led children to believe Columbus discovered America. Myint discovers “Leif Eriksson is the first European believed to have sailed to North America, having reached Canada 500 years before Columbus set sail to the west.” (Myint, 2015, Para. 2). Columbus did not plan to reach America; the voyage was to reach Asia. It is also believed Columbus set sail to prove the world was round. This is dismissed by Myint as “it was an idea that had been established by the Ancient Greeks in the 5th Century BC.” (Myint, 2015, Para. 4). Historians fail to provide these facts; this creates a false image of Columbus in a child’s

    Read More

  • Christopher Columbus: Hero Or Villain?

    605 Words  | 2 Pages

    Christopher Columbus does not deserve to be honored as a hero with his own holiday. Close to 500 years, people have praised Christopher Columbus and also celebrated him as though he was the one who truly founded America. Teachers teach students that he was a great man, also how he found treasures and land known as America. Students are also taught about the names of his three ships he used on his first voyage. However, they did not teach us the truth about Christopher Columbus, and his so called “discovery”.

    Read More

  • Christopher Columbus Controversy Essay

    877 Words  | 2 Pages

    The controversy of whether or not Christopher Columbus should continue to be acknowledged by a federal holiday proves that his legacy has not escaped the scrutiny of history. Arguments born of both sides of the controversy stem from issues such as genocide, racism, multiculturalism, geographical land rights, and the superiority of certain cultures over others. In The Christopher Columbus Controversy: Western Civilization vs. Primitivism, Michael Berliner, Ph.D. declares that recognition of Columbus Day is well-deserved, claiming that Western civilization is superior to all other cultures and Columbus personifies this truth. On the contrary, Jack Weatherford's Examining the Reputation of Christopher Columbus equates Columbus' so-called discovery with brutal genocide and the destruction of ancient sophisticated civilizations. These articles demonstrate two extreme points of view in a manner that makes clear each authors' goals, leading the reader to consider issues of author bias, motivation, and information validity.

    Read More

  • Christopher Columbus Should Not be Considered a Hero

    436 Words  | 1 Pages

    Christopher Columbus was a man who much credit was given to for a very small deed. In fact he discovered a new world, but that world was only new to him and the men of his previous generations. What about the many Native Americans whose fathers and father’s fathers shed their blood for the land in which they had lived for so many years. How could one such as Christopher Columbus who was looking for freedom and hope cause so much bondage and destruction? One man’s victory turned out to be devastation for millions.

    Read More

  • Persuasive Essay On Christopher Columbus

    817 Words  | 2 Pages

    Despite being one of the most renowned explorers in history, Christopher Columbus’ legacy remains controversial. The debate on whether Columbus should be celebrated has captured news headlines for decades. While many view him simply as a gifted Italian navigator who laid the seeds for the colonization of the New World, history paints a much more complicated picture. His journal entries and eye-witness testimony reveal Columbus to be a man of intolerance and indifference towards those deemed inferior to himself. Christopher Columbus’ treatment of Indigenous’ people, in addition to his ethnocentric worldview, allows for the conclusion that he should not be idolized as a hero in the modern age.

    Read More

  • Christopher Columbus: The Villain

    352 Words  | 1 Pages

    Christopher Columbus was a cruel, delusional, and self-centered man who does not deserve high praises for the discovery of America.

    Read More

  • Debunking the Mythical Hero: Christopher Columbus

    735 Words  | 2 Pages

    Along the Columbus journey bits of gold were found amongst the Native Indians which led to Columbus concluding that there was more (Zinn, 2009, p.481). The Native’s were turned into servants looking for a certain amount of gold for Columbus. If they had not met the daily quota their arms were to be cut off (Zinn, 2009, p.481). This is just part of the brutality that Columbus had put upon the Natives. More cruelty can be seen when Columbus sent five hundred Natives as slaves to the King and Queen in Spain. Also stabbing of Indians was done as a sport and those that resisted against the Spaniards were hunted down as animals (Zinn, 2009, p.482). Zinn shows that the Columbus story is one of the many myths of Western civilization. All the stories about Columbus especially in the USA since, it is a celebration are seen as a heroic adventure. However, many teachers argue that children should not be told such a violent story filled with horrific history (Zinn, 2009, p.485). It is important to teach children at a young age the truth about the Columbus story, so that they know what a monster he

    Read More

  • A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

    1226 Words  | 3 Pages

    In some respects, we can attribute the founding of America and all its subsequent impacts to Christopher Columbus. Columbus a hero in the United States, has his own holiday and we view as the one who paved the way for America to be colonized. However, people tend to forget the other side of Columbus, the side that lusted after gold and resources that often belonged to the native inhabitants he came across in his exploration. In his insatiable greed, he and his crew committed countless atrocities, such as torture and killing of defenseless natives. Columbus’s discovery of these new lands contributes profound and negative effects as future colonists arrived. “Zinn estimates that perhaps 3 million people perished in the Caribbean alone from raids, forced labor and disease” (Zinn, 1980). Columbus was seen as a cruel man, who saw the peaceful inhabitants as right for the conquering and lead to the devastation of the native population, yet is celebrated every October.

    Read More

  • Christopher Columbus: Villain or Hero?

    1520 Words  | 4 Pages

    For more than five centuries Americans have lifted Christopher Columbus to heights of greatness and god-like. We celebrate his life as though he was a man that had done us a great favor. In resent years Christopher Columbus has come under scrutiny, his life and works being questioned more than celebrated. There have be many great men and women that contributed to the building of our great nation but they do not receive anywhere as much recognition as Columbus. When a person begins to study the actual accounts of the "finding of the New World" they begin to wonder if Columbus should adored or hated for his actions. As a child I was taught that Columbus was a great man that had accomplished great things for the sake of humanity, but in reality his agenda was not to better humanity but to better himself. He found the Americas by mere chance and he did not even know of what he found. We give him credit for "finding" the Americas but history tells of the people, that he called Indians, already inhabiting the foreign land. So you decide whether or not Christopher Columbus should be revered a hero.

    Read More

  • Christopher Columbus Rape

    1062 Words  | 3 Pages

    For generations upon generations, students have been taught about the “hero” Christopher Columbus who had discovered our new world. However, to say he was a hero would not exactly be the truth; Columbus was an eccentric man who cared much more about his profits than the well being and even lives of the natives. It is documented in journals that he and his crew had slaughtered entire villages at a time, and that he had even killed people just for the point of testing how sharp his sword was. Not only did Columbus and his crew have a thing for violence, on multiple accounts crew members wrote down every single successful rape of women; and used the voyage to help begin a slave export for the royalty of Spain.

    Read More

  • Christopher Columbus: Hero or Villain?

    636 Words  | 2 Pages

    Other than what was taught in primary education I knew little of Christopher Columbus. I certainly did not know the truth. Educators and school board officials provided a faulty historical account of Christopher Columbus growing up. Most youth raised in America grew up with nursery rhymes and bedtime stories fictionalizing the heroic efforts and swash-buckling adventures of Columbus’ and men alike making their thievery and lack of concern for human life acceptable. All Americans including the Native and African Americans who were indirectly affected by Christopher Columbus via the slave trade and destruction of their people, observe Christopher Columbus Day. If this is so, why don’t we have a Hail Hitler Day? Hitler, though many see him as a terrible man, was simply doing what power hungry individuals have done for centuries. He simply took a page out of Christopher Columbus’ book destroying the weak and enslaving those left standing. In the case of Christopher Columbus quest for gold, he went to extreme measures to ensure he would get every last golden flake that glittered in Hai...

    Read More

  • Christopher Columbus: The Villain

    548 Words  | 2 Pages

    Christopher Columbus unintentionally discovered America, when he landed in the Caribbean Islands. He had left Spain in search of Asia and India. When he and his crew arrived at what now is Haiti for his second voyage, they demanded food, gold, and anything else they wanted from the Indians, even sex with their women. Columbus punished those who committed offenses against him. Rape and enslavement had been brought upon the natives. When the natives of the land, known as the Arawaks, tried to fight back, it led to a massacre of their people in which by Columbus? order, meant crossbows, small cannons, lances, and swords to destroy them. Even wild hunting dogs were released to rip up the Arawaks, whom by the end of the day were dead or ready to ship to Spain as slaves. None of this was ever taught to students.

    Read More

  • Ridley Scott’s Failure to Acknowledge the Truth in 1492: Conquest of Paradise

    4122 Words  | 9 Pages

    [2] Columbus is a mainstay of American patriotism. He is the patron saint who planted the seeds of our nation. Our culture has been lulled into his heroic myth for hundreds of years and has celebrated this man with much pomp and circumstance. Columbus’ worthiness has been the subject of much controversy and is now being linked to such un-heroic terms as mass murder, holocaust, and genocide.

    Read More

  • Lies My Teacher Told Me Summary

    716 Words  | 2 Pages

    There is strong evidence that Asian and African cultures may have also reached the Americas up to 8,000 years ago, clearly preceding Columbus, followed by the Norse cultures of Northern Europe as early as 2,500 years ago. By not acknowledging most of these trips, or only briefly, it undermines minorities, by the suggestion of history textbooks that only protestant Anglos-Saxon discoveries are important. Many textbooks also fail to mention all of the atrocities Columbus and his followers committed on the native people, then looking to the future to the black slaves of America, based on the Columbian exchange that brought African slaves to

    Read More

  • Paradise Found And Lost - Critique

    632 Words  | 2 Pages

    Although this essay is historically accurate it lacks important details, which might paint a different view of Columbus. Boorstin writes favorable of Columbus and depicts him as a heroic and determined figure who helped shape history, but he neglects to include Columbus’ unethical acts committed in the world that was not supposed to exist, the Americas. When Columbus first discovered the New World, he took care that the royal standard had been brought ashore and he claimed the land for Spain in front of all, including the indigenous population who had been sighted even before Columbus made landfall. According to the medieval concepts of natural law, only those territories that are uninhabited can become the property of the first person to discover them. Clearly this was an unethical act. Thus, the first contact between European and non-European worlds was carried out through a decidedly European prism, which ensured Spanish claim to the islands of the Americas. Faced with a colony in an inhospitable area, the Spanish soon inaugurated the practice of sending regular military parties inland to subdue the increasingly hostile natives. Members of the indigenous population were captured and enslaved to support the fledgling colony. The object of Columbus’ desire changed from exploration and trade to conquest and subjugation.

    Read More

More about Why Is Christopher Columbus Wrong

Open Document