For The Child
October 11, 2007

Et tu, Columbus? What we can learn about judging people from Christopher Columbus.

We all learned the story of Columbus discovering American in grade school. But in addition to that famous voyage there is another, lesser known –story about Columbus. We can use the story of Columbus's successes and monumental failures to help our kid learn to evaluate people and events based on facts. Learn more about Columbus's story here.

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We all have long-held beliefs that may or may not be based in facts. It is important to evaluate our beliefs and even adjust them as necessary. The ability to be flexible and change our behavior if needed is a great lesson for us to teach our children. With the ability to evaluate people, places and events based on changing information-and without the filter of bias- is the cornerstone to creating children who are capable of succeeding in a world where they are likely to encounter people of all shapes, sizes, colors and smells.

A great example of how we get caught up in our beliefs despite facts to the contrary is the story of Christopher Columbus. On Monday, October 8th the 33 of our 50 states celebrated the day that Christopher Columbus "discovered" America. But did he discover anything? And should we be honoring him at all?

First, the world that Columbus "discovered" was inhabited by hundreds of thousands of native peoples. The native people living in America at the time were the real discoverers of America. These people are said to have come to America from Asia via the Bering Strait 50,000 years ago. They reached South America around 800 BCE.

Second, Columbus was essentially a failure. After four trips to the New World, Columbus didn't fulfill any of his objectives. He never found the route to China. At one point, he came within 9 miles of the Pacific Ocean, but didn't believe that the overland route would get him there and turned around. He was not able to create a sustainable colony and didn't find the riches he expected. He was investigated for mistreating the native people in 1497. Rumors of his mistreatment continued and he was arrested and chained, along with his two brothers in 1500 and returned to Spain in disgrace.

By the time Columbus made his fourth trip to the New World his greed, cruelty and arrogance were legendary and he was reviled by both his own men and the indigenous peoples. , Columbus was also blamed for bringing slavery and the diseases of Europe to Latin America.

Despite all of that Columbus was a brilliant sailor and navigator and was the first European to map the Bahamas and Central American Coast and his skill and map making was instrumental in the exploration of the New World.

What can we take away from this? How can we apply this to raising children?

The easy answer is the old adages 'don't judge a book by its cover' and 'there are two sides to every story'-both true statements. We can help our children learn to evaluate facts and to not accept information at face value. We can teach our children that in order to be successful, mistreating people never works-certainly racism and bias are ways of mistreating people.

The value in looking at stories like Columbus's 'discovery' is that it takes the heat off the children-and us. We can provide insight and coping strategies using situations that don't involve the children directly. We can ask them what they think and what Columbus could have done differently.

But we can only do that if we are willing to look at things through a different lens than we are used to.

It isn't easy, but it is worth it.

Deb

Check out Deb's Blog: www.bullyeraser.blogspot.com