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Saturday Morning Videos: COLUMBUS DAY: HOW IS THIS STILL A THING?

I’ve always appreciated days off as much as the next person, but as a social studies teacher, it’s always bothered me that we celebrated a guy who chopped off the hands of natives who didn’t bring him enough gold (see item #7 on the History Channel’s list).

Um, seriously?

why is this still a thing

YouTube won’t allow it to be embedded, so here’s the link.

I actually did teach about Columbus’s–and other explorers’–cruelty; one of my favorite tools was Tod Olsen’s play “Explorers Who Abused the Indians–and Got Away with It.” (I don’t even remember where I got my copy from originally, but this lesson plan by Alex Wiese has a copy at the end.) It was a fun way to teach, and allowed for some interesting discussion about these “heroes”.

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