How to Celebrate/Commemorate Colombus Day
I think that for Columbus Day should be commemorated at our school by gathering for an all grade assembly that discussed both sides of Colombus and what he really did. I say both sides because we all know the side of Colombus that he found the Americas not knowing they weren't Asia and he named the natives their Indians thinking they were in India. “They willingly traded everything they owned... . They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features.... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane.... They would make fine servants.... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.” That was an excerpt from Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. I believe this shows the other side that people should also get to know. Nobody really knew his other side, the more violent side that took slaves and thought nothing of them except that they were equal to animals. After the assembly, each student could write three things they knew before the assembly and three things they knew after the assembly. Although eighth graders will have already known this it will be interesting for the sixth and seventh graders.