Why Columbus Day Should Be A Front In The Progressive Fight For Public Education
When we progressives turn our attention to the content of the public school curriculum, we often find ourselves engaged in battles over testing and standards or defending science and the Establishment clause of the First Amendment against the advance of Creationism.
But equally deserving of our attention are the creation myths of our nation. Just as ignorance of science threatens students’ ability to make informed choices about everything from their own bodies to the future of our planet, ignorance of history threatens their understanding of how people create and change societies—and thus, how they can be powerful members of their own society.
Near the beginning of every school year, one of the creation myths that upholds a White-dominant narrative of the Americas is Columbus Day. Each year, we as educators, parents, and community members face a choice: Will we use this day as an opportunity to empower students by delving into the complexities of our country’s past and present, or will we let Eurocentric nostalgia overshadow the truth?
A growing number of teachers have started to complicate the traditional “In 1492/Columbus sailed the ocean blue” line on Columbus. Some school districts, such as my own in Maryland, no longer take the day off in Columbus’ honor. Some cities and districts, such as Seattle, are taking a step beyond that by opting to observe Indigenous Peoples’ Day in honor of those who were already here, instead of the person who helped initiate several centuries of genocide against them.
But for our country as a whole, the day remains on the calendar, though most regard it as a day off to shop and hold parades. Many conservatives, on the other hand, often undermine any attempt to restore the Taínos’ narrative of history. They paint the organizing done by Native Americans and their allies as a “politically correct” assault on Italian-Americans’ heritage and American history as a whole.
For instance, an effort to declare Indigenous People’s Day narrowly failed in Oklahoma City. And the debate over whether the day should be Indigenous Peoples Day or Columbus Day has become a yearly observance on Fox News since at least 2010, when a commentator there declared that it was time to “Take back Columbus Day.” True to form, the folks at Fox believe that America should stop being “guilty” about the accomplishments of European explorers, and bask in our “commitment to the life-serving values of Western civilization: reason and individualism.” The fact that said civilization was built upon the large-scale slaughter and exploitation of others is apparently not worth dampening the celebration.
This backlash falls in line with similar assaults on Mexican-American Studies in Arizona; slights to the Civil Rights movement and other moments in Black history in Texas; attacks on AP US History in the right wing media (and in schools in places like Jefferson County, Colorado); revisionism around the rise and defense of the Confederacy, as well as the purposes of the Civil War, and more. These are all attempts to re-establish America’s history classes as a place to glorify the accomplishments of a small number of privileged white men,
- See more at: http://progressive.org/news/2015/10/188355/why-columbus-day-should-be-front-progressive-fight-public-education#sthash.QAlAgCnG.dpuf