Of course, it is part of history. If you're going to teach about a certain event or time in history, don't we have an obligation to tell them everything we know about it, the good and the bad?

People only leave out parts of a story, or re-write it completely, when they have an agenda.

Come on humans don't have agendas. They just want the kids to think of pleasant thoughts and take stimulants to calm them down.

the constraints are time and ability. There simply is not enough time in the day to teach kids everything, plus they are new to learning, they couldn't absorb that much information and they don't have the learning skills to process it properly either.

If someone is important enough to get a national holiday named after him, schools should find the time to tell his entire story.

I took history 5 days a week, 1 hour per day, for 8 years or so. Then in high school I took American history on top of that for 4 years, 5 days a week, 1 hour per day. Hardly anything bad was said about Columbus, the guy is a hero. However, they spent plenty of time teaching us about Mao, Hitler, Castro, and others, and where every single gun was fired during the Civil War, but the truth about Cristobal Colon somehow slipped by. Of course, you can learn about it in college if you go down that road, but it should be taught in every high school.

Lies ... but they make great Ridley Scott movies:

I would tend to agree and my history classes added up to about the same as your's. But I don't know enough about education and how it works. Because several subjects are sanitized/simplified to facilitate learning. both math and science are great examples.

We don't learn calculus until we've fully learned algebra, but algebra doesn't apply to real world problems like calculus and such do, it's bullshit really, but we need it to teach our brains how to process math. Same with physics, every time I moved up a level in physics, the prof would start with saying "forget everything you've been taught about physics up until now." Same with chemistry, have to take inorganic chem before taking organic.

I'm not saying it's OK to romantize history

There is no single truth when it comes to a historical event. There are multiple truths based upon different perspectives. Even eyewitness testimony to an event is not reliable as eyewitness testimony has been proven to be wrong time and time again. The best way to view any historical figure or event is to read as many books as you can find about any given figure or event and take a little from this book and a little from that book along with a grain of salt...scratch your head and wonder about what the real truth actually is/was.

very very true

:1orglaugh :thumbsup