Columbus Day is one of the few federal holidays that North Carolina public schools tend to let pass without a day off. I packed my kids off to Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools this morning as usual, and you probably did the same wherever you live.
When your children come home this afternoon, do you know what they’ll have learned about the man behind the holiday? Chances are you don’t, and that’s by design.
Readers may remember my piece last year about what children hear first about their country’s history. With Columbus Day coming around again, I went through the state’s curriculum to see what schools are actually expected to teach. (You may have noticed that this has become something of a project around here.)
As it turns out, North Carolina offers some guidance on Columbus, but no clear sequence for what children should learn about him at different ages. However you feel about the man, surely we want children to graduate from high school knowing who he was. So their education has to begin…
