Columbus Day Research Paper

Words: 595
Pages: 3

“In fourteen hundred ninety-two /Columbus sailed the ocean blue. /He had three ships and left from Spain; /He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain.” (Lisa). This childhood song is taught across the nation once a year to all grade school students. However, the students do not truly know what the song is about; because the history taught is bias and not the whole truth. The children are taught that Columbus Day celebrates the “founding” of the Americas, and the great Columbian Exchange that proceeded the founding. But why does a nation celebrate its founding when it was founded decades before? Why celebrate a historical event that affected numerous lives negatively? Why is this historical event and developments are linked back to Europe? Through numerous readings, and class discussions, it can be …show more content…
To understand the bias of the textbooks, once must notice that the majority of textbooks are written by white Europeans. Loewen states numerous times through his book Lies My Teacher Told Me that the main reason the textbooks are bias is because our people wrote them. Therefore, the reason a majority of good developments are traceable to Europe is because we, as the people, want to make ourselves appear good. To elaborate, in a class discussion we brought up the topic that the authors of textbooks correct what happens in history; this statements explained means, “textbooks that are "factually correct" may also be communicating very selective values and moral judgments. This form of bias is subtler than is bias resulting from inaccurate facts, but it can still be very powerful” (socialstudies.org). Americans gain the ability to alter textbooks