History is little else than a picture of human crimes and misfortunes. Voltaire You may have heard that tomorrow is Columbus Day. At least among those segments of the population that still celebrate the arrival of the explorer in the New World. That would be the public sector workers and old-time Catholics. Most of the rest of us have long ago stopped honoring Columbus as anything but a guy who brought a load of trouble to the native people living in the Western Hemisphere. There was a story this morning by AP writer Dorie Turner, in which she chronicled the change in the perception of Columbus among US elementary school students. In the article entitled, A darker side of Columbus emerges in US classrooms, Turner details how elementary school teachers are teaching an enlightened version of the Columbus saga. According to one visionary kindergarten teacher, the kids in his class think Columbus was a "bad dude". Never mind that this "darker view" emerged about 30 years ago and disregard the fact that a teacher can make elementary students believe most anything. Columbus is not a hero, at least by 21st century standards. His hero status based upon the 15th century norms is something else altogether. But we forget that part. Columbus, for better or worse, was a man of his times. Stronger, more technologically advanced people have always used their superiority to victimized weaker people. Whether it is the European explorers or the Apache terrorizing the Pima in the Southwest. The only difference is the technological limitation on their ability to wreck havoc on their victims. Teaching history is always a selective thing. We choose history that reinforces what we believe to be right . So, Old World conquerors bad, New World conquerors not so much? In the current mythology, all European invaders are murdering opportunists and all indigenous people are peace-loving innocents. Neither is completely true, but it makes us feel good to believe it. History provides us the luxury of seeing how things turned out for both sides. Five hundred years removed from the events of the time, we are all experts on what we would have done differently. There is certainly no justification for teaching about New World exploration without recognizing that indigenous people were victimized, murdered, uprooted and plagued by Old World diseases. All for the enrichment of European powers. If you want to teach school children that Columbus was a "bad dude", a good start would be to stop taking Columbus Day off. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky