Apush Assignment 1 Analysis

     Conversely, James W. Loewen, who did extensive research of high school history lessons to write his book Lies my Teacher Told Me, feels Columbus wasn’t really as great as he is made out to be. Loewen writes, “The history books make up all kinds of details to tell a better story and to humanize Columbus so that readers will identify with him” (38). Just as Hart pushes the idea that Columbus made a great new discovery finding the Americas, Loewen argues that “Columbus’s voyage was not the first, but the last discovery” (39). His importance has to do with the changes that were made in Europe and not having “discovered new land”. People from other continents had gone to America long before 1492. “Daring sailors reached America in a series of voyages across the North Atlantic, establishing communities on the Faeroe Islands, Iceland, and Greenland. The Norse colony on Greenland lasted five hundred years (982-c.1500)”. Loewen further goes on to argue against Hart on the issue of the Turks and their supposed land route control and describes the claims as a “falsehood”. Loewen also points out the several times Christianity is used as an excuse

Thomas King’s chapter “Forget Columbus” surrounds the idea that the preconceived notions that Americans have about their own history, and the Native Americans who have resided here for centuries, are wrong. Columbus never discovered America. The

A more pressing matter is that of the history in the classroom. With the one sided history being instructed to Native students bring a message that “Their history does not matter,” alienation begins to form and all motivation soon leaves the students (Laura).

When Columbus sailed to prove that the world was round, according to the website Livescience.com, he was late by two-thousand years. Ancient Greek mathematicians already have already proved that the world was round and not flat. Also according to this website, Columbus’s education was self taught and he believed that Europe was wider, and that Japan was further away from China’s coast. These are the reasons that he was going to try and find shorter trade route to Asia. When a student hears Columbus’ name they may instantly think that he was the first person to discover America. Although there were millions of Native Americans who were living in the New World, Columbus is the man who is getting all of the credit for finding the New World. There were also other travelers who had discovered America before Christopher Columbus.

High school history textbooks are seen, by students, as presenting the last word on American History. Rarely, if ever, do they question what their text tells them about our collective past. According to James W. Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me, they should be. Loewen has spent considerable time and effort reviewing history texts that were written for high school students. In Lies, he has reviewed twenty texts and has compared them to the actual history. Sadly, not one text measures up to the author's expectation of teaching students to think. What is worse, though, is that students come away from their classes without "having developed the ability to think coherently about social

Even though Columbus was not the first person to step foot in the America’s, he was the first person, from the Eastern Hemisphere, to discover it. For example, when we discover a new species on an island, we may not have known that it existed, but the other living creatures there knew that it did. While Rebecca Dobbs in Document B is right that the Americas were not empty by any stretch of imagination and people lived there and knew about this part of the world, others did not know about it. However, in a letter to Queen Isabelle, Columbus states that they have landed on an island and the people there

When columbus first found the Americas little did he or anyone in this case know everything that would happen in the next few years he would rewrite history and change it to how we know it now.

Chapter 25 discusses the United States and the Second World War from 1939-1945. The United States wanted to stay out of international affairs but the newly elected Roosevelt advocated for an active role in it. Though he wanted a role in this, his priority was to attack the domestic causes of the depression which appealed to many poor Americans who were suffering from the Great Depression and had just lost everything. During this time, fascist governments threatened military aggression and the rise of Hitler created a controversial and war-like atmosphere. Hitler had a goal to avenge the defeat of WW1 which lead to the accusations of Jews, and the eventual full-blown Holocaust. Neutrality acts were put into place during this time to prohibit the exchange of arms to nations during the war.

To start, Royal’s first points out that America was not “discovered” by Columbus as was taught in grade school, it was filled with thriving Native American tribes. As he wrote, “Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of different indigenous groups lived here at the time of Columbus 's arrival, and historians estimate the total population of the Americas at somewhere between 20 million and 100 million” (Royal 44). This population counts indicates a high-level society, in order for this many people to survive. This disproves many people’s incorrect

Many people believe believed throughout history that the beginning of North America’s inhabitance was when Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean in the year 1492. They believed that he is the person who discovered America where in fact it was the Native Americans who made the initial discovery. Therefore, Columbus’s mission is considered more of a journey. One of the motivators behind the voyage was to move away from Britain and begin a new life in what was to them, land of potential opportunity.

The Europeans were originally unaware that the Americas even existed. Explorers had accidentally landed on North America centuries before the discovery of the New World. Christian Crusaders played an important role in the indirect discovery; they wanted to have the goods that they had no previous knowledge of.

In my opinion, I believe that the theory that Christopher Columbus discovered America should not be taught in public schools. One reason to prove this is that there were Native Americans already in North America when he came. Referring to the text, “Primary Source: Columbus Meets the Tanios” on page 70, of the book, “The American Nation”, it says, “Columbus recorded his first meeting with the Tanios… people are ingenious and would be very good servants… they would very readily become Christians… very quickly learn such words spoken to them,”. This tells me that Columbus just looked for his benefit by going to America. That’s because he said that the Tainos would be good servants and be Christians. This proves the theory wrong because it really isn’t true. That’s because since Columbus saw the Natives there when he go there, that means there were people who reached before him. The Native Americans reached America thousands of years before Columbus. Therefore, Columbus was definitely not the first person to land in North America.

It also gives a completely wrong impression to say that Columbus “discovered” America; as Indigenous people, we often say that he invaded America” (Mitchell,2017). Another point to mention is that Christopher Columbus never “discovered” America. There is historical evidence that suggests that Vinkings explorers landed in the Americas before Columbus, “The Vikings' early expeditions to North America are well documented and accepted as historical fact by most scholars. Around the year 1000 A.D., the Viking explorer Leif Erikson, son of Erik the Red, sailed to a place he called "Vinland," in what is now the Canadian province of Newfoundland” (Weiner, 2007). However, despite the historical evidence that there may be nothing honor about Columbus, in many countries, he continues to be portrayed as a hero who discovered America. Also, many history books around the world continues giving him credit for “discovering”

Most history textbooks take Christopher Columbus and put him on a pedestal. These textbooks make Columbus the fantastic hero who was the first person to discover the Americas. These textbooks were wrong in idolizing Columbus. One text called The Lies my Teacher Told Me contradicts these textbooks. The text states that there were already many different groups of people that landed in, explored, or colonized the Americas. The first group of people was the ancestors to the Native Americans that were living there when Columbus came in 1492. Also the Norse established a colony in Greenland for 500 years (Loewen, 8). While there, the Norse explored parts of North America (Loewen, 8). This evidence proves that Columbus was not the first person to discover the Americas. Columbus began the demise of the current Indian cultures in the area. While Christopher Columbus and the

Loewen’s critique of the lack of interaction in our textbook narrative between Native Americans and the colonies is absolutely correct. As I read through the textbook the only two Native American interactions with the Colonists were Pocahontas and Squanto. The point behind only showing these two Native Americans in the textbook is that they are two of the few positive examples of Colonists interactions with Native Americans. In reality, the Colonists’ interaction with Native Americans was far more hostile. One of the arguments that Loewen made is that Native Americans and colonists lived and quarreled together for 325 years, but our textbooks decide to only show two positive interactions between American Indians and Colonists.