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As we continue to read through James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me I am taken back by the amount of information that was kept from those of us who received a public school education. Though Columbus has always been revered as a hero, I have heard stories of his cruelty to the Native Americans. Despite the harshness of his actions, this is something that didn't really surprise me when reading this chapter. However, there were many more pieces to this story that don't make it into the standard education which have a far greater impact than Columbus's exploitation of the native people. The fact that so many other societies contributed to this "discovery of the New World" and we fail to acknowledge them doesn't make sense to me.

I never realized how much of a biased education we received until starting to read this book. We only learn about the European "discovery" of the world, not about the people who already live in these places; not to mention the accounts of people who most likely visited many years before. To look past these highly likely scenarios and only talk of the European history of the world not only limits the knowledge of history given to students, it promotes the idea that the only people who really matter in this world are the white descendants of these European societies.

Like others are saying, there is a need to leave some things- such as Columbus being an extremely cruel person- out of these textbooks. There is no way someone can have pride for their country when their leaders from the past were bad people. Just because they shouldn't teach us things like this doesn't mean they should completely leave other historical events out though. People like the Phoenicians and the Egyptians contributed an immense amount to our history, and it goes practically unnoticed. Once textbooks are able to provide students with a whole truth of our history, it could make it more interesting for them and will make students have a better sense for the history of our world.