Given a choice of spending the day with one of the following people, who would you pick?
Individual #1 is intelligent, educated, adventurous. A devout man of faith. A born leader who, through tenacity and hard work, won the confidence of influential investors and parlayed their support into tremendous success. He changed the world through his bravery and forward thinking; his achievements will be celebrated for centuries and beyond.
Individual #2 is arrogant, intolerant, entitled. A racist with no respect for other cultures, he ran roughshod over anyone standing between himself and the material riches and glory he desired. Dishonest. A thief. Kept company with violent, remorseless men—rapists, torturers, killers. Guilty of either permitting or participating in the trafficking of young women (girls, actually, as young as age 9) into forced sexual servitude. Responsible both directly and indirectly for the deaths of many thousands of innocent people.
Feel free to take a moment to think about whose company you would choose.
Would it surprise you to know they’re the same person?
Depending on whose narrative you believe, both of the above are descriptions of Christopher Columbus.
You remember him? “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue” … surely that sounds familiar? (Though you probably only learned a snippet, the full text of the poem is actually much longer; you can find it here.)
Well, the 1492 part is still widely accepted, and probably the color of the ocean. Otherwise, moms and dads will likely find that the Christopher Columbus of today’s classroom is a very different man than the heroic adventurer they learned about in school.
You may have been taught that Columbus didn’t truly “discover” America, but rather landed in islands in the present-day Bahamas, and in fact never stepped foot on the North American mainland. You might know that Leif Erikson, a Norse explorer, was actually the first European to land in North America, close to a half-century before Columbus made his voyage from Spain.
Chances are you were not, however, taught in Kindergarten that Columbus “was very, very mean, very bossy.”
You probably did not, like 4th graders in McDonald, PA, hold a mock trial charging Columbus with “misrepresenting the Spanish crown and thievery,” find him guilty, and sentence him to life imprisonment (under the tutelage of a teacher who commented, “In their own verbiage, he was a bad guy.”).
The 1492 voyage financed by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain—there were three subsequent trips to the New World in 1493, 1498 and 1502, as well—has been celebrated throughout Europe and the Americas for many centuries, but Columbus Day has only been a U.S. federal holiday since 1937. Lobbying by the Knights of Columbus convinced President Franklin Roosevelt and Congress to officially recognize the occasion. By all accounts, the Catholic organization was looking for a strong, accomplished Catholic role model for young children, and Columbus fit the bill.
These days, though, it seems you cannot read the news without coming across some sort of indictment of Christopher Columbus. One recent article claims a contemporary Columbus would be “sitting on Death Row awaiting execution” and that he “makes a modern villain like Saddam Hussein look like a pale codfish.” Another cites “Columbus’ Men Were Rapists and Murderers” and “Columbus’ Men Used Native People as Dog Food” in a list of alleged “bloody, greedy, sexually perverse and horrendous atrocities committed by Columbus and his men.”
Contrast these depictions with Ronald Reagan’s remarks when signing a Columbus Day proclamation in 1988, “…on this day we revisit the enduring lessons of his courage and leadership. Columbus, of course, has always held a proud place in our history not only for his voyage of exploration but for the spirit that he exemplified. He was a dreamer, a man of vision and courage, a man filled with hope for the future and with the determination to cast off for the unknown and sail into uncharted seas for the joy of finding whatever was there. Put it all together and you might say that Columbus was the inventor of the American dream. … Yes, Columbus Day is an American holiday, a day to celebrate not only an intrepid searcher but the dreams and opportunities that brought so many here after him and all that they and all immigrants have given to this land.”
You can help your child understand that our Lord is and always has been in control, even when we have a hard time comprehending why things happen the way they do. Click To TweetToday, 16 states do not formally recognize Columbus Day. The longest-abstaining is South Dakota; since 1990, the state has celebrated Native American Day on the second Monday in October.
Type “Christopher Columbus” into a search engine; you might conclude that academia has abandoned discussion of whether Columbus deserves credit for a discovery of any significance. Instead, public discourse now seems to be focused on the emotional debate of whether he was a Really Bad Guy.
Perhaps this is the time one might expect the author to clear up all the misunderstanding, but herein lies my point: there’s a lot of information out there, and passionate people can use bits and pieces of it to make a pretty compelling argument for some far-flung points of view. I realize I may be preaching to the choir among homeschoolers, but you can’t—you mustn’t—rely on someone else to tell you what to think. And how much more important is it, that strangers (who may not share parents’ values and beliefs) not be allowed to dictate what impressionable children will think?
What you CAN do, as a home educator, is teach your child a balanced view of history, and you can do it within the framework of God’s sovereignty. You can help your child understand that our Lord is and always has been in control, even when we have a hard time comprehending why things happen the way they do.
You don’t need to whitewash the fact that the rulers, societies and religions of centuries past often understood their role in the world (and the Great Commission) very differently than we do.
You don’t have to pretend that throughout history, innocents didn’t die—from violence, miscommunication, disease—when two populations encountered one another for the first time, nor must you teach your child that those events were intentional genocide.
You don’t even have to act like you would choose to spend the day with the kind of man who’d sail halfway around the world in search of previously uncharted lands. If nothing else, you’d avoid that awkward conversation about finding a shorter route to Asia.
Aren’t you blessed, though, to be the one teaching your child?
Just an aside: in a happy coincidence, the lesser-known Leif Erikson Day—celebrated every Oct. 9th—and Columbus Day, which is always the 2nd Monday in October, happen to fall on the same day this year. So for 2017, at least, those of you who think we should be celebrating Leif Erikson Day instead of Columbus Day can ignore the latter and still not have to walk to the mailbox. Enjoy! (It won’t happen again until 2023.)
Artwork: Landing of Columbus by John Vanderlyn; commissioned by Congress June 1836, installed in the Capitol Rotunda early January 1847.
