History and the errors that were made:

First we are taught that we should all know are history so that we will not make the same mistakes of the past. Fair enough statement. But what if that history was wrong?

And once we discover a mistake in the history books should we not revise that book for the next printing? History books are revised yearly or so they say on the cover, the new revised edition. But is it truly revised or just added to? So we continue to teach the same old lies. It’s no wonder why things haven’t changed.

Finding a starting point for this is very difficult, it is best to start at the beginning, but which beginning? I think we will skip the history of the earth is self, when it was created? How it was created? When did man first place foot upon the earth? These kind of questions scientist have been debating for years, so let’s just start with what we know is in a typical student history book used in most public schools today.

History of America:

First thing would be America was discovered by? Christopher Columbus sailed from Spain across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, landing in the "new world" of the Americas and gaining lasting fame. Using ships and money provided by Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castille, Columbus sailed west in search of a sea passage to India. He had two goals: open trade routes for Spain and bring the word of Jesus Christ to the non-Christians he expected to meet. He sailed with three ships (the Niña, Pinta and Santa Maria) and on his first trip made landfall somewhere in the Bahamas. He returned to Europe to spread the word, and was named "Admiral of the Ocean Seas" by Ferdinand and Isabella. He made three more voyages in the following years, always believing that he had reached Asia, and his success opened the door for Spain to conquer the Americas. Five centuries after his daring voyage, Columbus is still famous but is also the subject of heated discussions about whether he was a good-guy hero who discovered new worlds or a not-so-nice guy who helped grab the Americas from their native inhabitants. Still, he has long been known as the man who "discovered" America, and the second Monday in October is celebrated as Columbus Day in the United States. Ok so here is the debate. Is he a good guy? NO. Did he discover America? NO. Why are the answers to these questions NO. First it is known that he was so bad at one point he was returned to Spain in hand cuffs. Second in 1492 this land America just mysteriously popped out of the sea? I don’t think so the and was the land abandoned? Again NO. Native people were already here. He came to set up a trade route, that is fine but there were other’s who have already established a trade route with this land and its people. Should they not get the credit they deserve? And if so who were they? Answer: The Vikings. So if he was such a bad guy and we have determined that he is not the true discover of America. Than why is he still credited as doing so? And why are we still celebrating his so called success?

Let us move to George Washington:

George Washington is called "the father of his country" for his crucial role in fighting for, creating and leading the United States of America in its earliest days. Washington was a surveyor, farmer and soldier who rose to command the Colonial forces in the Revolutionary War. He held the ragtag Continental Army together -- most famously during a frigid encampment at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania during the winter of 1777-78 -- and eventually led them to victory over the British. His success in the war made him a tremendously popular figure in America even after he retired to his farm at Mount Vernon in 1783. He was the natural choice to serve as the country's first president in 1789 after the new United States Constitution was ratified. He served two terms, refused a third, and returned to his Virginia farm. In 1798 he was again commissioned as Commander in Chief of the Army, a title he held until his death 18 months later. He was succeeded as president by John Adams.

www.infoplease.com...

How could we possibly find fault with the description of one of the most famous person in our history. Question one: Was he our first president? NO, boy I bet your eyes and mind just went bonkers when I said that did it not? OK explanation: Washington was in deed the first Electoral President, but was not the first sitting president of the U.S.A. there were at least six others before him. I will explain further. From then till this day have you ever watched the Senate on television? The person sitting is always addressed as Mr. or Madam President. Even the elected president understands this. When the elected president sends any form of communication to the senate it is delivered by a carrier, and those carriers are announced to the senate before entering upon entering and mind you they only go in to the room a short distance they address the chair. Again Mr. or madam president we have a correspondence from the white house. Not from the president, but the white house, they are also carrying flag poles and before delivering the message they wait for permission to do so. After which they in slight bowing for to the chair exit the room by walking backwards never to turn there backs to the chair. The president elect can not come any time he or she wants to the senate the president elect must be invited to do so. An invitation is the only way the elect can address in person to the senate. Got you thinking yet? Here is one of the major downfalls that are leading our nation into turmoil. The day the senate was no longer appointed to there position, and had to be elected to office. Now instead of doing what the senate was put there to do, like policing the house of representatives so there was never a breach of our Constitution, they now have to worry about what there constitutes feel so than can be re-elected to office. Totally abandoning the principle purpose of there office to begin with. Now we have no police to enforce the Constitution we might as well combine the house and the senate since both are now free to do what ever they please and show total disregard for the Constitution that they swore and oath to up hold.


This one should be easy. Who made the first American flag? Any one, any one. Betsy Ross you say, I say not. So again a false teaching of history yet to be corrected.
Name at birth: Elizabeth Griscom
According to patriotic legend, Betsy Ross sewed the first American flag at the request of George Washington. No firm evidence exists to prove the story; the legend is based on statements made by Ross's grandson, who said Ross told him the story on her deathbed. Ross definitely was a seamstress and upholsterer in Philadelphia at the time of the Continental Congress, and her role in the creation of the flag has been widely accepted as fact. Her first husband John Ross, a member of the Pennsylvania militia, was killed in an explosion while guarding an ammunition dump. Her second husband, Captain Joseph Ashburn, was captured at sea during the war and died in a British prison; she later married another friend, John Claypoole, with whom she had five daughters. She died in Philadelphia in 1836.
Ok lets say Washington did ask her to sew a flag for him, that flag would have not been the American flag it would have been a military one.
What is known is that the first unofficial national flag, called the Grand Union Flag or the Continental Colours, was raised at the behest of General Washington near his headquarters outside Boston, Mass., on Jan. 1, 1776. The flag had 13 alternating red and white horizontal stripes and the British Union Flag (a predecessor of the Union Jack) in the canton. Another early flag had a rattlesnake and the motto “Don't Tread on Me.”
The first official national flag, also known as the Stars and Stripes, was approved by the Continental Congress on June 14, 1777. The blue canton contained 13 stars, representing the original 13 colonies, but the layout varied. Although nobody knows for sure who designed the flag, it may have been Continental Congress member Francis Hopkinson.
After Vermont and Kentucky were admitted to the Union in 1791 and 1792, respectively, two more stars and two more stripes were added in 1795. This 15-star, 15-stripe flag was the “star-spangled banner” that inspired lawyer Francis Scott Key to write the poem that later became the U.S. national anthem.
In 1818, after five more states had gained admittance, Congress passed legislation fixing the number of stripes at 13 and requiring that the number of stars equal the number of states. The last new star, bringing the total to 50, was added on July 4, 1960, after Hawaii became a state.
So whether it was Ross or Hopkinson or someone else? Why don’t we teach that instead of teaching Ross as fact?
I could go on with such things as: when the bible was removed from the classrooms, or the power was taken from the teachers so they could teach to take a test the FCAT.
I could even go into good ole Abraham Lincolns Proclamation approximation. And show you were the trickery lies there. But will save that for another thread. But I will say in that he only freed the slaves of the South in hope that they would fight for the North, cause in truth till only a few years ago it was still legal to own slaves in the Northern Colonies but that error has been corrected and is no longer legal to do so. Food for thought is it not?
And I could fill a whole another thread with the dumb’ing down of our students in American society. But I want to hear from you and the things you have found to be false teachings to our children. And were you think the downfall of American can be linked to?


[edit on 19-11-2009 by drmeola]



Added 'ex' tags and a link for external content

[edit on 19/11/09 by masqua]

I was taught in junior high school that Leif Erikson was probably the first person to sail to North America, beating out Columbus by about 500 years.

I like to read up on the disgusting reality of most American history.

It's kind of sick that we teach what Thanksgiving is about, but we leave out the genocide part. In most cases, it's not that we have "changed" anything about history, but we left out alot of the nasty parts.

George Washington was an upper class man, who believed that all men were created equal.
Wait, I mean WHITE people.
And only MEN...not women.
But he did rise up, and commanded an army to defend our country. You know, the one we stole.

Ah but those were different times I suppose.

It's serendipitous that I would find this post today.
Yesterday I wrote an article for helium.com about how to teach controversial history to students without upsetting them.

Heres' a link.
www.helium.com...

Excellent post and I'd be happy to discuss the philosophical side of the question with you, if you have any specifics.
Starred and Flagged

Hi, OP. Just to get this out of the way, it was the Emancipation Proclamation that Lincoln signed. Not the approximation. Just saying......yes, we need to know our history. We need to know our real history, but as usual, history is written by the victors. I don't know, but do students in elementary schools still hear the tale of George Washington throwing a silver dollar across the Potomac? What a superhero he was if he did that! And the cherry tree story? I don't have any references to post for this, but it''s something I stumbled across quite a few years ago. Viking signs were found in the U.S. southwest, even. For sure, at least in my mind, Vikings "discovered" the Americas, at least the northern Americas,long before Columbus. Do we know all of our history and is it correct? I don't think so. Take for exampe, the Kennewick Man. I believe that spelling is correct. The skeletal remains of an estimated 10,000 year old body was discovered in the U.S. northwest. Analysis of the teeth led scientists to believe this person, whose remains were discovered were of a caucasian male. Older than any found remains of humans so far on this northern continent. The federal government ordered the site to be filled in and not to be excavated again. What really goes on? What do we truly know? It seems history becomes legend and then myth. The truth is eventually lost, but some bit of truth might remain. Just rambling here. I hope I have added something of value to the thread. By the way, we here in Kentucky are quite aware, well, some of us, that Daniel Boone was a blowhard and a great myth maker of himself. Does anybody really believe that in just a few days he ran through the forests for a few days, Indians on his trail, running from somewhere north of Cincinnati, Ohio, all the way to Boonesboro, or Fort Harrod (different accounts of the same story) and actually jumped 200 or more feet from the top of a cliff into the Kentucky River and survived?

The downfall of America, or any nation or empire can be found in just human nature to make big of some things and downplaying other things, all based upon the interests of whoever is in power at anytime. That and greed.

Okay, I might get off topic here, so I will just shut up. Good things to think about, OP.

reply to post by briantaylor


I did read your article and I agree with a lot of what you said and pointed out. I believe this attitude of not questioning the teacher and accepting what is written in a text book as fact is the real problem behind the failure of our school system. And why the applicants excepted to ivory league schools, around 80 percent of them are home schooled. At home they are taught and not trained to take a test, FCAT test to be specific. Thank you for your post and look forward to an on going discussion.

reply to post by kyred


Thank you for pointing out my mistake I have made the correction my bad. And thank you for your post, Daniel Boone good reference I always liked Davey Crocket king of the wild frontier. Maybe cause my name is Dave, lol

In my opinion it is of little intellectual value to just cherry pick historic events.
Not that I am intellectual. I think most considering themselves intellectuals are cherry pickers.
So involved in their pet topics as to not see the forest for the trees.
We live in a complete and total world. In order to understand any one aspect of history properly, IMO
----one needs to know all that is occurring at the same time period world wide. And for several thousand years prior as well. Governments try to insure that you do not attain this kind of understanding

I find it quite appalling that I was told over and over (this was during the cold war) during my education about how the Soviets had edited all the history books to omit certain people and events. Gasp. Shock. Horror....How could they be so despicable as to edit history?

Fast forward to my adult years where I learned to love history....

Infected blankets to the Indians?
British concentration camps in Boer South Africa?
The internment of people Japanese heritage during WW2?

Oh how the list goes on. Not in ANY of my history books at school.
History is, indeed, written by the victors.

Do we learn from history?
Of course we don't.

* March on Moscow from Western Europe during the winter.
* Invade and occupy Afghanistan.
* Install a 'democratic' government in Iraq.
* Believe that any treaty of peace will hold.

We're too busy standing behind national pride to expect anything other than complete victory.

Check out "America B.C." by Barry Fell and think about how
much more we are not told.
And why.
There are good reasons for not investigating trips to America and
other regions before the Fall of Rome.
Well so raw material locations are not disclosed.
Imagine the record keeping that was lost and re discovered.
And the possibility as far back as biblical times, well the Roman
times and perhaps 500 BC with indications of the ships of Tarshish
in Psalm 48 and 72 were sailing the high seas beyond the Pillars
of Hercules or Gibraltar.

I have found in my experiences the most truthful history is taught mainly in song to generation to generation by the American Indians. It’s not a specific date history, but it is the history of there ancestry and what has happened to them as individuals. There version be of victory or defeat has always been handed down with truth. I believe children would be well to learn dates of truth such as presidential order the dates they served when the constitution was established. You no what I mean real facts provable not theories or someone else’s idea of truth. But proven hard core facts. To me that’s the real history.
Thank you all for you post I find them very interesting. Keep them coming.