Betrayal of History

Please make sure to address the questions posted here and tie them into what you thought was interesting or odd from you assignment. Many of you are still only doing one or the other! Well…here we are…Many of you have written that you feel lied to and betrayed by past teachers, textbooks and schools…led down a path of misdirection, smoke-and-mirrors, and “genuine faux” history. =) No longer can we use the words “imagine” or “feel” in our textbooks. All of you, according to textbook companies (Betrayal of History), aren’t smart enough to decipher words like “sharpen” in textbooks, and thus shorten words such as these by a couple of letters to make them miraculously understandable. History texts must now pass a battery of tests given by special interest groups before being put into the hands of our children, rather than allowing professional historians write and edit them. You’ve learned not only some horrifying things about one of America’s great “founders”–Christopher Columbus, but also that he was not even the “first” to come to America, but the LAST in a long line of explorers and adventurers. Many of you have stopped to ponder: “Is this just the tip of the iceberg? If the story of Columbus and the Native Americans could be so distorted, what other stories have been twisted and contorted into something palatable for the masses?” And you’re right…this is just the beginning…. For example, just out of curiosity, how many of you know that our CIA, beginning in the 1950s, have participated in (and sometimes orchestrated) the assassinations and overthrows of foreign leaders? Ever heard of Patrice Lumumba? I would bet you probably haven’t…. So……Loewen asks the question: “What has gone wrong?” Indeed, something appears to have gone terribly wrong. What do you think has happened? And, what effect have the issues of ethnocentrism, eurocentrism, racism, nationalism, and “heroification” had on the stories we tell ourselves about the beginnings of this place we call home? What are your thoughts about all of this? What other issues came up for you in your readings? BE SURE TO TIE IN ANYTHING YOU FOUND INTERESTING OR WIERD IN YOUR ASSIGNMENT INTO YOUR DISCUSSION!!!