Two Views of Christopher Columbus

When I taught high school history (both World History and American History) for 27 years I discovered my students knew virtually nothing about Christopher Columbus. I thought this was abominable, absolutely incredible. I delved in the Social Studies curriculum that they would have taken previously in their elementary and middle school courses and found that indeed, Columbus and his explorations were sufficiently covered in the fourth grade. So I took it upon myself to personally rectify this egregious lack of knowledge by an intense concentration upon Columbus, his voyages, and the context of the time of the European Age of Exploration. Besides numerous handout materials, classroom resources, and their text book, I showed them two very different biographical portraits of Christopher Columbus (“Cristoforo Colombo”). The first is a rather conventional treatment but remarkably objective and comprehensive; the second was a more critical focus and today many persons would consider it a “woke” interpretation. But I believed students must get a full portrait of this seminal figure in world history, as well as that of the equally crucial figure of the time, Bishop Bartolomé de las Casas, champion of human rights of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

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9:53 am on October 11, 2021