Cristopher Colombia in primary school curriculum

For what it's worth I think your approach is quite sensible. Hopefully the details the teacher sent you will show it's already planned to be taught in an appropriate factual way or they'll take your concerns on board.
Threads about history always get super heated and filled with straw men though.

I agree with you.

He is named on the KS1 History National Curriculum in a list of significant individuals pupils might study, but we’ve never done him for the reasons you outline in your post.

Columbus didn't think he had gone to India - he thought he had gone to the East Indies, what we now call Indonesia (and the Philippines).

A lot of people had slaves in the past. Julius Caesar had slaves. Abraham Lincoln had slaves. Do you want children not to learn about those people either?

Adolf Hitler was, IMO, a very bad man. Should children not learn about him either?

One thing I only realised recently (learning about history of Lille) is that slavery and colonisation were ordinary across Europe pre 1500s, pre-New World "discovery. European were bastards to people in Americas because they were used to being bastards to each other routinely. Fiefdoms, serfs, eunuchs, vassals, conquest, subjugation, genocide, rape & pillage, all completely "normal".

Watching the recent Shogun adaptation is good, set in 1600s... the 2 cultures insisting that the other is totally barbaric, when through modern eyes, both cultures are awful.

if we only taught history about people only if they did things we liked then there would be no history teaching at all.

Someone already mentioned the Romans. They weren't nice to Boudacea (or to Jesus for that matter).
Henry VIII? Look what he did to his wives.
Elizabeth I? She started the roots of plantation system/cultural destruction of N. Ireland.
Mary Tudor was blood thirsty.
Nowhere as bloodthirsty as Catherine the Great, I suppose.
Marie Antoinette was a wee bit out of touch.
Napoleon was a maniac.
Churchill was alcoholic.
And as for Hitler...

Yes, he’s a very significant explorer.

Yeah I'm 44 and I think that's how we were taught it too (in primary), though to be honest I mostly remember being interested in the cool ships. I do think it was somewhat glorified, and was certainly told from the European perspective. I'm sure it's more balanced now. It did stick with me though, and I went on to do a degree in archaeology, with a specialism in pre-Columbian civilisations.

Not every country has apologised though.

Germany have apologised to Poland

The U.K. have never apologised to Ireland. An apology would ease so much tensions and improve relations.

I don't think you will find any nation or race with a blameless past - or frankly a blameless future.

Im sure the school will be only too pleased to include information regarding your ancestry, schools love it when a parent or other relative can help personalise the curriculum and talk to the kids, working with the school to ensure its age appropriate

The Aztec people were already very familiar with slavery, rape, and war long before the Europeans arrived.

I'm 46, and have always known that, it was taught that way at school. Exploration to search for quicker shipping routs, to discover new commodities, pillage valuables and colonise - it was never a peaceful exercise.

I wrote that:

Ireland fought for its independence last century.
That there was a rise of Independence - which resulted in the UK killing the independence leaders.
The UK would not give Northern Ireland back, which caused the Irish civil war.
And which later caused the northern ireland troubles.

Those are all facts which can be observed by amy neutral observer of history

Can you point out which one of those things are inaccurate?

My point above though is that it wasn't "voyages into the unknown" - that is the romaniticised, sanitised framing of them as brave explorers. They explicitly set out to find alternative routes to known territories, in order to enrich themselves by conquering, exploiting and Christianising them. The intention was more like the Norman conquest than the moon landings (and even those had a political motivation). It wasn't like they went out just to advance European knowledge, and then some dodgy people decided to colonise the lands they stumbled upon - colonisation was always the plan.

Hate to burst your MN anti-men balloon but many of those 'male humans' were in the service of some female rulers!

To an extent that has even been tried in the UK, there was a concerted effort to remove the Gaelic languages and traditions completely - thankfully that trend has very much been reversed.

You should absolutely be equally as proud of your indigenous roots as your European ones, acknowledging wrongs that were done as well, and, hopefully then we all learn from history - and don't repeat its mistakes.

Firstly you didn't just state neutral facts, you made statements that are clearly not neutral because many historians would disagree with them. To be neutral, there would have to be a widespread consensus that they are true.

Secondly, all but the most basic of facts often are contended. Historians may not debate whether Germany invaded Poland, but disagree significantly about the causes of the invasion, for example.

Of course my opinion is neutral.

Any neutral person could say "Germamy invaded Poland and caused destruction in Poland."

That is fact. Poland didn't invade Germany. Germany invaded Poland. Any neutral obsever of history can see that.

I don’t know you personally or what your views are. But what you have written on this thread is undoubtedly an Irish Nationalisf interpretation of history. You could take it to the most senior professor of history at Trinity College Dublin and he or she would say “this is an Irish Nationalist interpretation.” It’s not at all neutral.

But that’s the whole point of this thread. Often we think of our own perspectives on history as the “neutral” or “unbiased” perspective. If you study history (and especially historiography) at university, and maybe even A-level, you learn that such a thing does not exist.

What amazing parents!

Such things are discussed in secondary school - so its quite possible to be on the history syllabus years down the line.

The module went right back to the 17th century examining the causes of Anglo-Irish conflict, and it didn't 'spare' the English. At the time, for example, Gerry Adams was being dubbed by an actor on British news reports, so it was quite a groundbreaking module in the voice it gave to Republicanism. The name of the module came from the Lloyd George era and partition, so pre-dating Hitler.

But that's history shaping you,

I have a good friend who is a history teacher, he's a proud Jamaican, a black Jamaican, who points out that without the slave trade, he'd not be a Jamaican at all.

History moves people about, mixes people up, for all sorts of reasons, good and bad, and shapes their futures.

For example most certainly the war in Ukraine and the spread of refugees will have lead to children being born here, as brits, in 300 years time their descendants will probably have no more link to Ukraine than a Ukrainian surname - but a bad event will have brought about generations, hopefully of productive happiness.