If it's Thanksgiving...

... it must be time to teach 9 year olds how horrible Pilgrims were:

Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he "discovered" them. The reaction is exactly what Morgan expects: The kids get angry and want their things back.

Morgan is among elementary school teachers who have ditched the traditional Thanksgiving lesson, in which children dress up like Indians and Pilgrims and act out a romanticized version of their first meetings.

He has replaced it with a more realistic look at the complex relationship between Indians and white settlers.

Morgan said he still wants his pupils at Cleveland Elementary School in San Francisco to celebrate Thanksgiving. But "what I am trying to portray is a different point of view."

This is the mindset now empowered...

H/T to Michelle.

Comments

[Leslie]

The point he's making is that history has been presented from one side...and he's doing it by presenting a different one-sided point of view. Doesn't seem like much progress to me.

Happy Thanksgiving, Rick.

And Tim, I'll see your 15 & raise you 5,
-20C with a windchill. :)

[Tim Chesterton]

Perhaps you could pardon the turkey...

Although he does have a point. I say that as one who worked in First Nations communities for twelve years.

But be that as it may - a happy Thanksgiving to all of you south of the 49th, from this neighbour of yours in the chilly north country (it's minus fifteen centigrade in Edmonton today).