Happy Bartolome Day

Thanksgiving and Columbus Day were some of my earliest teachings that made me think about alternative learning options for my family. I didn’t like that we were taught outright lies, not to mention hero worship, about our own history. It’s one thing to teach, “Well, we are not sure what happened, but we think it was this due to X evidence,” but it’s a completely different hotdog when you know what’s in the mystery meat and it sure isn’t a chicken-pork blend. Know what I mean?

You probably do. Most of us have moments when we realize that we’ve been taught something that’s supposed to be truthful when, in fact, it’s most emphatically untrue. Such is the case with the vomitous story of Christopher Columbus. Every year my daughter and I celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day instead of Columbus Day; in fact, she’s barely aware that he exists because I don’t think it’s appropriate to really discuss torturers and rapists to seven-year-olds. She does know about his voyage and that he was after gold and slaves.

But this piece actually presents a heroic figure we might consider replacing Columbus with. A mother in one of our homeschool groups suggested Bartolome Day on our Yahoo thread today and he sounds like a pretty cool figure. So today, Wood Sprite and I are going to spend some time digging up details on him and his life. I still prefer an Indigenous Peoples’ Day, but it’s nice to learn about people in history who tried to fight genocide and other atrocities.

As an adult, I really love learning about history—especially about people we never even heard about as kids. I also love learning about how most people are not only heroic, but how they have layers of gray that illustrate just how human and flawed we are. Even with this in mind, I’d never argue that Columbus is a hero—and there are so many other great people who aren’t even mentioned in American history who are. Why not give them a holiday instead?

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia