This study will argue that the school system should change the way it teaches children about the activities of Christopher Columbus related to the "discovery" of "America." The way Columbus has been studied in the past has shown him to be a hero who brought wonderful changes to the land he "discovered" as well as to the land he left and returned to (Spain and Europe). However, Columbus brought much suffering to the people ("Indians") of the land he discovered. He was not the hero the school system has said he was, and these errors should be corrected.
Two articles by William M. Davidson and Henry Noble Sherwood take the point of view that Columbus was a great man who discovered America. Davidson calls Columbus "The Great Navigator" and says that in Columbus "passion for discovery rose to the dignity of an inspiration" (Davidson 248). Sherwood writes that Columbus and his men found "naked savages" in the new land and that Columbus treated them well (Sherwood 253).
If we were to try to understand Columbus and his activities after reading Davidson and Sherwood, we would not have a complete or true picture. In Bill Bigelow's "Columbus in the Classroom," we find a more complete and true picture of what Columbus was really like and what he really did in and to the land he thought was India.
Bigelow writes that Columbus did sail west with three ships. He and his men did finally find land which was populated by people whom they named Indians because they believed the land was India. He and his men gave the "Indians" "little trinkets and returned to Spain with a few of the Indians to show King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella" (Bigelow 254). All of these facts are true, says Bigelow, and all of these facts are known by every child who goes to school in the United States.
The problem, Bigelow says, is that this storybook picture of Columbus is only a small part of the whole picture, and it leaves out a lot of information which shows th...