Whitey Ford
11-25-2019, 08:39 PM
‘I Was Teaching a Lot of Misconceptions.’ The Way American Kids Are Learning About the 'First Thanksgiving' Is Changing
Liberal teachers everywhere are learning new 'facts!'
Did the people many of us know as pilgrims call themselves Separatists? Did the famous meal last three days? True and true, they shouted loudly in unison. Were the pilgrims originally heading for New Jersey? False.
The teachers at this Nov. 9 workshop on “Rethinking Thanksgiving in Your Classroom” were there to learn a better way to teach the Thanksgiving story to their students, but first, they had some studying to do. When Gokey explained that early days of thanks celebrated the burning of a Pequot village in 1637, and the killing of Wampanoag leader Massasoit’s son, attendees gasped audibly.
“I look back now and realize I was teaching a lot of misconceptions,” Tonia Parker, a second-grade teacher at Island Creek Elementary School in Alexandria, Va., told TIME.
In reality, the gathering was neither the first encounter between the colonists and the Native Americans, nor was it purely a happy moment. A mysterious epidemic, spread through contact with the Europeans, had decimated the Wampanoag population, so they reached out to the English at Plymouth, “because they wanted allies and access to European military weapons” in case they needed to defend themselves against their rivals, the Narragansett, according to historian David J. Silverman, author of the new history This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. And while it’s true that the famous meal in 1621 was peaceful, it did not last. War between the settlers and Wampanoag broke out in the 1670s.
https://time.com/5725168/thanksgiving-history-lesson/
Thanksgiving? No thanks
After years of being constantly annoyed and often angry about the historical denial built into Thanksgiving Day, I published an essay in November 2005 suggesting we replace the feasting with fasting and create a National Day of Atonement to acknowledge the genocide of indigenous people that is central to the creation of the United States.
I expected criticism from right-wing and centrist people, given their common commitment to this country’s distorted self-image that supports the triumphalist/supremacist notions about the United States so common in conventional politics, and I got plenty of such critique. But I was surprised by the resistance from liberals, including a considerable number of my friends.
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/11/thanksgiving-no-thanks/
Liberal teachers everywhere are learning new 'facts!'
Did the people many of us know as pilgrims call themselves Separatists? Did the famous meal last three days? True and true, they shouted loudly in unison. Were the pilgrims originally heading for New Jersey? False.
The teachers at this Nov. 9 workshop on “Rethinking Thanksgiving in Your Classroom” were there to learn a better way to teach the Thanksgiving story to their students, but first, they had some studying to do. When Gokey explained that early days of thanks celebrated the burning of a Pequot village in 1637, and the killing of Wampanoag leader Massasoit’s son, attendees gasped audibly.
“I look back now and realize I was teaching a lot of misconceptions,” Tonia Parker, a second-grade teacher at Island Creek Elementary School in Alexandria, Va., told TIME.
In reality, the gathering was neither the first encounter between the colonists and the Native Americans, nor was it purely a happy moment. A mysterious epidemic, spread through contact with the Europeans, had decimated the Wampanoag population, so they reached out to the English at Plymouth, “because they wanted allies and access to European military weapons” in case they needed to defend themselves against their rivals, the Narragansett, according to historian David J. Silverman, author of the new history This Land Is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. And while it’s true that the famous meal in 1621 was peaceful, it did not last. War between the settlers and Wampanoag broke out in the 1670s.
https://time.com/5725168/thanksgiving-history-lesson/
Thanksgiving? No thanks
After years of being constantly annoyed and often angry about the historical denial built into Thanksgiving Day, I published an essay in November 2005 suggesting we replace the feasting with fasting and create a National Day of Atonement to acknowledge the genocide of indigenous people that is central to the creation of the United States.
I expected criticism from right-wing and centrist people, given their common commitment to this country’s distorted self-image that supports the triumphalist/supremacist notions about the United States so common in conventional politics, and I got plenty of such critique. But I was surprised by the resistance from liberals, including a considerable number of my friends.
https://www.rawstory.com/2019/11/thanksgiving-no-thanks/