Christopher Columbus

In class we talked about perspectives and Professor Kaplan raised the question as to why we focused on aerial warfare in the Western Front opposed to Italy's aerial presence in Libya. This question made me think about how important history is and the way it's told. Many people can tell you that Christopher Columbus sailed to North America because that's what we learned in a middle school history class. However, not a lot of people can tell you that Columbus butchered the indigenous population that he encountered, used them to harvest gold, and claimed that he saw land first (to get a reward) even though one of his crewmates did. Every year I laugh at the idea of "Columbus Day" because of this. After taking history classes in college and understanding the different points of view from both sides of an exchange (European and the Indigenous population), it makes me look back and realize how biased teachers are in Elementary, Middle, and even High schools. Although middle school students don't need to know every grizzly detail about how Columbus tortured the natives, they should at least be told more than "Columbus discovered the New World" in class. I just found it interesting how we follow history based on the perspective of the victor or world superpowers most of the time and neglect other population's points of views if they're not in power.