Saturday, November 27, 2010

Reflective Post 14

Two days ago it was Thanksgiving, a time of when we should be celebrating our thankfulness for everything in our life. A time, when I was taught in elementary school “where the Indians and Pilgrims came together and had a Thanksgiving feast”. In 1st grade before Thanksgiving break, half the class would dress up as Indians and the other half would dress up as Indians. We would then have a joyous feast of apple cider and goldfish. Not the most spectacular thing, but it got the point across that the Pilgrims and Indians were friends and liked each other. I had this belief of great friendship between the two groups up until the end of elementary school. I was watching a PBS special one night by myself on the relationship between settlers and the Native Americans, and it was here I learned the truth. The Indians and Pilgrims were not friends, they were enemies. All my childhood thoughts of the two groups were wrong. My World felt like it was crashing down. Just kidding, I’m exaggerating, but it was a rough blow to my childhood thoughts of joy and love and happiness between the Pilgrims and the Indians.

What confuses me during the holidays is why we were never taught the truth in elementary school. I’m sure some schools do tell the truth, but mine was certainly not one of them. I had to find it out on my own, and then had to ask the teacher to explain it to us the next day in class. Sure, some could argue the situation is to morbid for children to learn about, but why even mention it then? What I’m getting at is children never learn about Nazi Germany or the Holocaust in elementary school because it is to morbid for them to learn about, so teachers could easily not tell us about the pilgrims and Indians instead of giving us a false truth. Why do elementary schools teach us false facts? Its school! We should know the entire truth behind the story. They should not just tell us the Indians and Pilgrims were happy with one another, that they taught each other how to plant corn and hunt, and then they lived happily ever after. Teachers should follow up with the ending, and talk about the bad parts of the story too, not just the good parts.

Reading Todorov, we learn more about the tension and hardships between the Native American and the settlers. Todorov tells his version of the truth, a truth more believable than what we believe in elementary school. I am glad we read this book and went to the Museum of the American Indian before we left for Thanksgiving break. It reminded me that Thanksgiving is not just a happy feast between the two groups of people.

Image Source: http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb152/karnivorous/thanksgiving.gif

1 comment:

  1. Hmm...interesting argument. I some times wonder the same. When you look at it from a perspective after you've learned about the subject, however, I feel that one would argue differently than when they haven't. It does sound right that school should be teaching us the truth from the beginning, but do you think that maybe the bigger point that they're trying to do is teach us the values of "helping each other" and "being friendly" and (the big one) "sharing"?. I remember that most of the times in elementary school, they tried to put a lot of the informational textbooks into stories so it could be more entertaining for us and with it, the stories always had happy endings in them. As children, we always expect happy endings in stories because we deeply despise the "bad guys". If the schools were to say that the Indians ended up dying, I feel that a lot of us would've grown with hatred and resentment towards the Pilgrims, because we would've taken the issue more at heart.

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