Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education
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So What to teach? Why not ask a Native America?Thanksgiving?
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Author:  Ainhoa B Canup [ Tue Nov 01, 2005 1:42 pm ]
Post subject:  So What to teach? Why not ask a Native America?Thanksgiving?
I found this article on the web about a Native American struggling during Thanksgiving season. I now have a better understanding why this can be a sensitive topic and I wanted to share some of his own words about it:

For an Indian, who is also a school teacher,
Thanksgiving was never an easy holiday for me to deal with
in class. I sometimes have felt like I learned too much
about "the Pilgrims and the Indians." Every year I have
been faced with the professional and moral dilemma of just
how to be honest and informative with my children at
Thanksgiving without passing on historical distortions, and
racial and cultural stereotypes.

The problem is that part of what you and I learned in
our own childhood about the "Pilgrims" and "Squanto" and
the "First Thanksgiving" is a mixture of both history and
myth. But the THEME of Thanksgiving has truth and integrity
far above and beyond what we and our forebearers have made
of it. Thanksgiving is a bigger concept than just the story
of the founding of the Plymouth Plantation.

So what do we teach to our children?

This presented above comes from this web address:
http://www.2020tech.com/thanks/temp.html#story

The writer here has inspired me greatly and given me knew light about Thanksgiving. Here is his name:Chuck Larsen
Tacoma School District

Printed: September, 1986
Let's make a difference!
Author:  Ashley Cave [ Tue Nov 01, 2005 2:25 pm ]
Post subject: 
I think this is an important issue, this can be applied to many facets of teaching. It would be hard to put away feelings or strong beliefs about something to give your students information that the teaching stardards have made. There are alot of things that students don't get to learn about, they usually only learn half of the truth then later on in life, if they are interested in the topic they might find out more accurate information. I could see in a more dominate Native American setting the students would focus more on the native americans rather than the whole pilgrim feast, etc. However it would have to be taught because it did happen.
Author:  STEVEN MURPHY [ Wed Nov 02, 2005 2:05 am ]
Post subject: 
I also think that Thanksgiving is a difficult issue to address because as an educator you know you should be accurate in your teachings.

This may be off subject, but it does address the issue of improving our image of Native Americans and the use of their titles. I just recently learned that in elementary school the students no longer call what I learned and probably most of you learned "sitting Indian style", the students now call it "kris, cross apple sauce". So much of the ways we learned to call think are now totally changing for the next generation. :)
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