There are a lot of things commonly taught grades K-12 and even beyond that are not accurate but have been taught for so long, they get grandfathered into the system. I am creating this category in my blog to share with you the lies I have been discovered along the way about our country’s history and hope that you will add your comments and share things you have learned as well.
One of my main focuses will be on ancient stone structures that have been found in North America. These structures prove in my opinion that Columbus was not, by far, the first European in the Americas.
There are many misconceptions about our history and I hope that I will be able to point out some of the many flaws in our history books and I hope that you will enlighten me with any historical knowledge that you have that is not usually taught.
2-1-09 For example, how many of you know the great story of the shot that was heard around the world? How Paul Revere warned everyone on his famous midnight ride ”the British are coming, the British are coming.” How many of you knew this was a lie? The Truth: Paul Revere was in jail for being drunk when the British arrived.
So, why then are all students taught about the famous ride? Why not tell the truth about what happened that night? I believe it is because at the time the nation was trying to get started and they needed heroes, they needed a way to boost moral. However, because they needed to create all of these heroes, they have been written into fact because of our history books. Even School House Rock has a song about the shot that was heard around the world. If you tell a story long enough, it becomes fact…and that is why we have so many misconceptions in history.
2-9-09 Another great example is how after an investigation, they found that George Washington’s estate could not support the growth of cherry trees, or at least that there is no evidence that a cherry tree ever grew on the estate. So, our famous, I cannot tell a lie hero was made into a lie in our history books if you ask me. Just in case you never heard the story, George Washington was suppose to be famous for admitting that he chopped down the cherry tree. It was suppose to have the moral of admitting when you did something wrong instead of laying the blame elsewhere or lying about it. He is quoted as saying ” I cannot tell a lie” when he admitted to his father that he had gone out and chopped down the cherry tree he was not suppose to touch.
2-18-2009 Now to start in on my favorite topic in Early American History….the fact that Columbus was far from the first European to come to North America. In my opinion the most obvious proof of this fact lies in the odd stone structures that lay around the country (especially on the East Coast). The structures that I have personally seen, STRONGLY resemble Celtic structures found in Scotland and Ireland…what is even stranger is that these Stone Structures contain bits and pieces of ancient Ogam (Ogham), a Celtic language that was thought to have died out long before Columbus’ time. These structures not only look like Celtic structures that are still standing in Scotland and have the Celtic writing that is associated with ancient druids…but the structures are set up in the same ceremonial fashion as if to match the ancient Celtic traditions.
6-18-09 Most people I have ever talked to agree that we need to teach history so that it doesn’t repeat itself, but when you have limited time in a classroom, how do you choose what is important enough to spend a lot of time on and which things you need to just kind of brush over and only have time to mention that it simply happened. I think that history needs to be taught in a way that people can almost experience, they need to look at not just the events that have happened but the reasons behind them and who was involved, all of those kinds of things really matter when it comes down to not wanting history to repeat itself…and yet a lot of people seem to only ever teach a time line of events. What good will it do for people to know that things happened if they don’t know why, if we don’t know why we don’t know how to prevent….we need to ask why so we can figure out the because of history.
12-16-09 I’ve noticed lately watching the history channel that more and more people are starting to catch on that Columbus was not the first European in America. I think it’s pretty interesting that all of the sudden there are a ton of theories out there in the open when a few years ago people would have laughed historians out of the business if they mentioned it. What has changed to make people take a second look? How can we get the history books to take a second look with the rest of us? Catch on to the trend? There seem to be all sorts of shows, documentaries, and books out on the subject of who was here as a functioning culture before the well known Pilgrims but not Native Americans. Chinese, European, Vikings, all sorts of different people. I don’t know why people have taken so long to realize that this was a real possibility. I don’t know why we can’t give people credit for what they had hundreds of years ago. I mean, different cultures had their own modes of transportation and more than one of those cultures had very large ships that could have easily traveled across an ocean and back. How else did the images of maize get in the Rosslyn Chapel centuries before Columbus arrived in America which is the only place that maize is known to be at that time. My personal theory is that there was much more travel and trade than we give people credit for in the history books.
May 2010
There is a new mini series out on the history channel…America: The story of Us. Please do not believe everything you see on the history channel. I have a friend who teaches history and for the end of the school year project, the kids are picking out all of the mistakes and things that were missed in this mini series. I don’t know when movie stars and rap artists became the experts in history, but that’s what they’re showing. They also skip things in history like the colonial wars, except for the revolution, and WWI. Last time I checked, WWI is a rather hard thing to forget about. I will have to get a hold of that list when the high school students are finished pulling the show apart. I think it’s pretty sad that there are a group of history high school students that can recognize when the there are mistakes on the history channel and yet there are high school history teachers that would swear up and down by any information that they hear or see on the history channel.