Core Knowledge social studies fifth grade - part 2

 

Unit 3 “Age of Exploration”

I’ll start with addressing the term of “Age of Exploration.” Naming WORLD HISTORY eras after something exclusive to Europe/Europeans is…*drumroll*…EUROCENTRISM! Unfortunately, this type of Eurocentric naming of time periods is in almost everything. Europeans were actually some of the last people on the planet to “explore” the world. Asians, Africans, Polynesians, and even some Native people of the Americas had already been seafaring and exploring the world for centuries before Europeans stopped being too afraid of leaving site of the shore and going into open ocean (other than the Norse and Danes). And that’s really what it boiled down to…they didn’t sail out of site of the shore for fear of sea monsters until the 1400s while other people had been doing it for hundreds of years or longer. Europeans traveling to parts of the world they hadn’t been to yet, hundreds of years after other people already started doing that, isn’t an “age of exploration.”

Beyond that, Europeans weren’t actually looking to “explore” anything. They had no interest in exploration in and of itself and we can even see this directly in writings of the time including Columbus’s own journal and letters. They were conquerors looking to invade and conquer, they were treasure hunters looking for gold, and they were human traffickers (slave traders) looking to kidnap people to enslave. Those were their motivation. We know this from primary sources. They were never “explorers.”

The non-Eurocentric term for this time period is the Early Modern Era. For Native peoples it is an Age of Invasion. Now that we have that out of the way…

Chapter 1 is about “the spice islands.” It starts by claiming that the US only exists because Europeans liked “spicy food.” They wanted spices yes, but if they were really just interested in trade for spices they would have just sailed here, traded for things, and left and the US wouldn’t exist anyway. Instead, they invaded and committed genocide (which the curriculum calls “settlement”). It wasn’t about spices.

The curriculum calls European travelers “explorers,” “adventurers,” and “dreamers” instead of traders and invaders. There is no need to romanticize travel driven by economics and greed like this. Yet here we are.

Chapter 2 is about “motives and means.” Yet again, we find the false claim that bananas are from the Americas. It seems like a silly detail, but they’ve repeated this inaccuracy multiple times, they obviously didn’t fact check much. This could have been a simple Google search. It then frames the Crusades as simply trying to “capture the holy lands from the Muslims” with absolutely zero discussion about what that actually meant. Yikes. The rest of the chapter is just about Europeans figuring out what the rest of the world already knew and used – navigation. It does at least mention that they were too afraid to leave site of land until this point in time…due to sea monsters.

Chapter 3 is about Portuguese “exploration.” It calls the Portuguese the “pioneers of the sea.” As previously mentioned, they’re the last people on the planet to start doing this, so that doesn’t make them pioneers. It then says they wanted to set up trade routes, spread Christianity, and gain knowledge. They flippantly say “spread Christianity” throughout the curriculum as if that didn’t include extreme violence. Leaving out the violence part is inaccurate (by omission) and Eurocentric bias, another way Eurocentrism shows up in how things are explained. It isn’t incorrect that they, in their minds, wanted to “spread Christianity,” but to accurately tell history you can’t just state someone’s intention without the reality of their actions. You can tell fifth graders that they wanted to spread Christianity, that was one of their motivations, but they did so through violent and deadly means. It makes no sense to leave that out after repeatedly harping in “human sacrifice” in the Americas and describing methods like ripping their hearts out and throwing them down the stairs. If they can tell fifth graders that information, they can tell them the truth about how Christianity was spread.

When talking about the Portuguese in Africa it does acknowledge that they brought back “people, to be sold into slavery,” but then turns around and says those kidnapped people became “servants and laborers.” Again, this may be on its surface true…enslaved people were forced to work as servants and laborers but simply stating that they “became servants and laborers” without including the truth of slavery is an extreme bias and inaccurate telling of history. Again, if they can repeat graphic and racist tropes of “human sacrifice” to this age group, they can tell the truth of slavery in an age-appropriate way as well. It is a deliberate choice not to.

Chapter 4 is about Christopher Columbus…oh boy. Essentially this is an extremely whitewashed version of the story. It largely focuses on the first voyage itself (at sea) and barely says anything at all about interactions with Indigenous peoples. Lies by omission. At the very least, it doesn’t perpetuate the false story about people thinking the world is flat. It acknowledges that “educated” people knew the world was round and that Columbus thought the Earth was smaller than it is (but it says “smaller than people imagined” rather than what scientists had calculated). It does somewhat perpetuate the flat earth story by saying some sailors thought it, but it was a known fact at the time that the world was round. It also says he was Italian, but recent DNA studies have found that he was Spanish. Beyond that, Italy didn’t exist in 1492. People thought he was Genoese, but again, that has been proven incorrect. It is important to update resources as we find out new information.

It does name the Taino by name, which is a good thing. It only mentions that they fished off their coasts. It does nothing to explain who the Taino were, anything about their society, how large their population was, that they were farmers, that they were skilled seafarers. But then it says Columbus “took six Tainos with him” instead of saying “captured” or “enslaved” which would be the truth. Saying “took” makes it sound like they went willingly. It then mentions the islands he went to and renamed and then skips everything and talks about him sailing back to Spain. It says absolutely nothing of his brutality, genocide, destruction, slavery, etc.

The curriculum doesn’t capitalize Indigenous when talking about people. Always capitalize Indigenous and Native when talking about people! It also says the “indigenous” peoples had maintained sophisticated cultures for “hundreds, if not thousands of years.” WOW! The number is TENS OF THOUSANDS of years. Minimizing our civilizations to “hundreds” of years is not only an all-out lie, but a means of discrediting our histories and who we are. This is blatant racism.

It then claims it was Columbus’s brothers, not himself, that “forced the indigenous people” to work in gold mines. The word they’re looking for is “enslaved” and it was Columbus himself. We have significant proof of this through primary sources. Columbus himself was responsible for enslaving people and trafficking people. That’s the only sentence they include about the mistreatment of the Taino. That’s it. The chapter wraps up by saying Columbus had his reputation destroyed with little information about why and then mentions why the Americas are named “America” and not after Columbus. Like I said before, it’s extremely whitewashed and inaccurate.

Chapter 5 is about criticisms of the Spanish as colonizers. It says they Spanish were “ruthless colonists” but then essentially claims Indigenous people died from work in mines and diseases rather than by genocide. This is again, extremely whitewashed and outright false. It says “Indigenous people died in large numbers in gold mines…” This is passive language (they died) that takes the fault off the Spanish who enslaved and killed them. It again does not call it slavery. It does not mention outright slaughter, executions, human sacrifice (Columbus liked to hang 13 men at a time in “honor” of the 12 disciples and Jesus), or genocide. It blames the gold mines and diseases rather than the Spanish themselves, never mind that the Spanish created those conditions. It also says the island of “Hispaniola” (Ayiti) had only hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. It likely had closer to around 1 million. It says by 1531 there were only about 600 “left.” Again, passive language to take the fault off the Spanish. The Taino were murdered. It acknowledges that the people from Africa brought to work on the islands were enslaved, but it makes no such acknowledgement that the Indigenous people were enslaved until a little bit later, and even then, only minimally. They could have called it enslavement from the start; there was no reason not to other than to minimize the evil actions of the colonizers.

It does talk about Bartolome de las Casas and his case against enslavement. It mentions his work against the exploitation of Indigenous peoples. The entire section is about Las Casas, not about Indigenous people where the focus should be. It never mentions genocide. This was a genocide; It should be written as such.

Chapter 6 is about Magellan. In the description of why they went west it says that finding a passage through South America would “make trade and the accumulation of wealth easier for the European explorers, traders, and merchants…” This is framing invasion, conquest, colonization, and genocide as “trade and accumulation of wealth. This is framing the invaders and conquerors who are committing genocide as “explorers, traders, and merchants.” This is Eurocentric and dishonest. This also says he “was killed in a confrontation with local chieftains” in the Philippines. That’s a whitewashed way of saying he was killed when locals rightfully resisted Magellan’s attempt at conquering and forcing Spanish rule…which is, in reality, what happened.

Chapter 7 is about the English. The “big question” of the chapter is “How did European exploration of the Americas lead to settlement and colonization?” The problem is…there was no “European exploration” at all, there was only European invasion and conquest. Early European contact with the Indigenous peoples of the Americas was never about exploration or trade, it was only ever conquest because they believed that they were racially superior and that all non-Christian civilizations were evil and must be destroyed. The more word got back to Europe about the Americas, the more they believed the racist lies, the more they wanted to be part of the conquest. They were mostly slave traders and treasure hunters. This was always an invasion with the intention of full takeover. Eurocentrism in education strikes again.

It says that mapping the east coast of North America set the stage for colonization, but it defines colonization as “the practice of bringing people from a different country to control and settle an area that already has an indigenous population.” This is a whitewashed definition that doesn’t really touch on the violence of colonization. Colonization in and of itself is inherently violent. There is no way around that. A better dictionary definition of colonization is “subjugation of a people or area especially as an extension of state power.” Subjugation is more than just “control,” but the violent act of forcing people to be under one’s control. Also, if they had just asked the Indigenous people along the coast, they would have been able to make much mor accurate maps…because Indigenous people mapped the coast already, just not in the style of European cartography.

In the part about building colonies, they do acknowledge that Spanish colonization was for the purpose of finding gold and silver, but they ignore the violence that requires. They talk about the English wanting to establish permanent settlements where people could hunt, fish, and farm. They make it sound passive and peaceful rather than the violent invasion that it was. They talk about the English monarchs giving land grants to joint-stock companies to colonize, but they leave out the part where the English have absolutely zero rights to grant someone else’s land to these companies. If I were the leader of England, I can’t just grant land in Spain to someone because I have no rights to the land in Spain. They leave out the part where this requires land theft, which requires genocide and dispossession of Indigenous peoples. They leave out the part where Indigenous nations are, in fact, sovereign nations with total legal rights to their own land.

The chapter then barely touches on Roanoke and repeats the mythology that the colony “vanished without a trace” and no one knows what happened to it. We actually do know what happened to it and it’s well established in written English history, oral histories of the Indigenous peoples of the area, and in archaeological records. This was never a “lost colony,” they simply integrated into the Indigenous community on Hatteras Island.

And we see the complete disregard for the sovereignty of Native nations in the next section as they say the Powhatan Confederacy was made up of “Native American groups.” Groups. Not nations, not even “tribes,” but groups. This is like calling England or all of Europe a “group.” Sovereign nations are not “groups,” they are nations. See more thoughts on this here: Native American Curriculum Review: Thoughts on Educational Standards and Textbooks - the word "groups"

The curriculum then states that the Powhatan Confederacy was named for the “chief” who governed it. This is factually incorrect. They called the leader of the Confederacy the Powhatan after the town he was from, not the other way around. Powhatan wasn’t his name and the confederacy wasn’t named after him.

It glosses over the Mayflower, likely because it is taught more in depth in a different grade level. But it claims the Mayflower colonists “wanted religious freedom.” That’s not really why they came to the Americas, as they already had religious freedom in Holland where they had been living for about 11 years prior to 1620. They came to the Americas because they wanted to establish a “holy kingdom” where there was no religious freedom at all, only their religion would be allowed. None of the colonies were established for religious freedom, that is a founding mythology of the US, not a fact.

It then glosses over genocide and dispossession by saying “This land belonged to various Native American groups, who were often forced to find new places to live.” So again, complete disregard for the sovereignty of Native nations as political entities. And a whitewashing of invasion, genocide, and forced removal by saying “often forced to find new places to live.” This was not “often,” it was every single time, and it wasn’t simply finding new places to live, but fleeing for their lives amidst the English attempts at eradication of Native peoples.

Chapter 8 is about the French and fur trade. It says North America was new to Europeans and had not been mapped. It should have said it had not been mapped “by them,” as non-European mapping methods existed in the Americas.

I do find it humorous that they don’t even spell Verrazzano’s name correctly. This curriculum obviously cannot be bothered to be factually accurate.

Moving on…Jacques Cartier. It says he visited a “Native American village” in the so-called “St. Lawerence River” (Kaniatarowanenneh is its original name). They don’t call the place by name; they don’t even name what Native nation this was…just generic “Native American village.” The generic usage of terminology is harmful to education, as I have explained multiple times in reviews. There are hundreds of different Native nations, and we are not all the same. This was specifically a Haudenosaunee town called Oscheaga (the French mispronounced it as Hochelaga). It was not a “village,” but a town of around 3000 people with fortified walls. Curricula like this one always diminish the reality of Native civilizations to inaccurate terms like “village” while never using the same language to describe European towns and cities. They call actual European villages “villages,” but they don’t diminish towns and cities in the same way. They only do that to the Americas. This is racist. In fact, I recently saw a social media post that called a Wichita city of 20,000 people a “village.” This kind of thing is everywhere, and it is a direct result of poor education from curricula like Core Knowledge.

 It then says that Cartier and the “Native Americans” had developed a “friendship.” This word annoys the crap out of me in curricula and other educational materials. “Friendship,” “friendly,” “friendly Indians,” etc. No one was making friends during colonization! These were political relationships, plain and simple. The Europeans didn’t trust the Indigenous peoples because they believed racist lies about them. The Indigenous peoples didn’t trust the Europeans because their arrival always meant death and destruction (disease, genocide, warfare, invasion, land theft, etc.) But sometimes Europeans needed to develop political relationships with Native nations for various reasons, usually because they were weak, sick, running out of supplies, etc. Sometimes Native nations needed to develop political relationships with Europeans due to disease and epidemics, attempts to prevent them from taking over, political diplomacy, etc. But none of these were “friendships.”

It tells a story of Cartier and his men getting sick with scurvy and their generic Native American “friends” helped them and cured their scurvy with a tea. Again, they were not “friends,” but beyond that this happened in a different Haudenosaunee town, Stadacona, not Oscheaga. The story makes it seem like it was in Oscheaga. It then says he and his men simply returned to France. The reality is, he and his men kidnapped the leader of Stadacona, named Donnacona, and 9 others and forced them to come to France with them. Donnacona died in France. This negatively impacted French and Haudenosaunee relationships in further contact, which would be an important detail to mention.

Next, we jump to Champlain. Still with the generic “local Native Americans” rather than naming Native nations. This would be like telling European history by simply referring to them all as Europeans and never naming any nations. “the Europeans…” this and “the local Europeans” that. It’s harmful in that it reinforces the stereotype that we’re all the same. I have to teach adults and teachers that we are not all the same and are unique nations because of this type of “education.” It says “the Native Americans” were “eager” to have metal tools and goods. Some of the oldest (possibly the oldest) metal tools in the world were made in the Great Lakes region out of copper. Natives had metals. It could say they wanted “steel” or “iron” goods and tools, but just “metal” isn’t accurate as it makes it seem like Natives didn’t have metal.

When discussing “New France,” it says the French “dealt with” Native Americans differently than the English. “Dealt with” means to “handle a situation or problem.” Native peoples living in their own homelands that you are invading is not a “situation or problem” to “deal with.” The French were the situation or problem, not the other way around. This could say the French “interacted with” the Natives differently, but “dealt with” is a terrible way to say this. It again states the English colonists “pushed Native Americans off land they had lived on for generations.” The English did a lot more than that and this is dishonest. The English killed, attacked, and destroyed Native peoples and communities. They not only dispossessed Native peoples who had lived there for more than generations but for tens of thousands of years, but they also committed genocide.

Then it says the French were “more peaceful” and says they had not tried to “conquer the Native Americans.” Colonization is inherently violent and a form of conquest. It is not and never can be “peaceful.” This ignores the power imbalance of colonization and the consequences of colonialism. While the French and Native nations did become military allies often and the French did focus on trade, the fur trade was not benevolent either. The fur trade caused the extreme over-hunting of the area which forced the Native nations to become dependent on the French instead of their relationship with the land that had always provided for them. The French greatly benefited from this while Native people suffered.

It incorrectly calls North America a “wilderness.” This is one of the most pervasive US founding mythologies, but what I find ironic is if this had actually been a wilderness – none of the colonies would have survived and the US would not exist. So, the US’s existence relies on this NOT having been a wilderness, yet the origin mythologies of the US always make this false claim. This was not a wilderness. It was cultivated, managed, developed, and cared for over tens of thousands of years. Two-thirds of what is now the US was agricultural. There were cities, roads, farms, towns, extensive trade networks, and civilizations that were advancing just like the rest of the world. The colonists took over existing infrastructure, they would not have survived otherwise. How is “Wilderness” a Colonial Construct? — Organeyez | by Naira de Gracia | Medium

Native American Curriculum Review: Not an Untouched Wilderness

Chapter 9 is about the Dutch. It doesn’t say a whole lot about the Americas, but it does talk about Henry Hudson (whom several places in Canada are named for). It claims Hudson “discovered” what is now called the Hudson Bay in Canada and thought it was the Pacific Ocean. You can’t discover something that has been known to people for thousands of years. Hudson Bay was known to Indigenous peoples and widely used. We also see the repeated mythology of “wilderness” here. It claims the Dutch “acquired” Manhattan Island from generic “Native Americans.” Fortunately, it doesn’t perpetuate the mythology that Manhattan was sold for a few trinkets, but it doesn’t tell the truth either. Manhattan was the land of the Lenape people, not just generic “Native Americans.” The Dutch did not “acquire” Manhattan from the Lenape either, they just claimed that they did. The Lenape accepted trade goods in exchange for letting the Dutch use the land, not to sell it to them. The Lenape did not believe in land ownership or buying/selling land. They agreed to essentially lease it to the Dutch. The Dutch claimed they bought it because they didn’t understand the Lenape’s agreement with them. You can read letters from the Dutch in the later 1600s that express their frustration that the Lenape would not leave the land that they had “purchased.” This is historical record of the misunderstanding by the Dutch. The Lenape were eventually forced out of Manhattan even though they never did actually sell it to the Dutch.

Chapter 10 is about slavery. It starts out by trying to minimize slavery by repeating that people around the world had been practicing slavery for thousands of years. This is only ever used as an excuse for what became one of the worst systems of slavery in history – Chattel slavery.  It goes on to say Africans were already engaged in slavery before Europeans and does little to explain why what the Europeans did was so much worse. Colonization plus slavery and inventing chattel slavery is different than what had already existed. There is no need to introduce this topic the way they did. This is actually a horrible way to introduce this topic.

In their section about slavery in the Americas, it starts with talking about how the Spanish “used” Indigenous people in their mines and “used” local people to “work on the plantations.” If we’re talking about slavery, why not call it slavery? The Spanish enslaved the Native people of the islands. They dance around the fact that Indigenous Americans were, in fact, enslaved. This wasn’t isolated to the Caribbean islands either. Millions of Natives (Americas) were enslaved throughout the history of slavery in the colonies and in the United States. Through this, Native people and trafficked African people developed close bonds and shared relationships that helped both. It is an important part of history that is almost always ignored or overlooked. Core Knowledge not calling this slavery is doing exactly that. Teaching the Hard History of Indigenous Slavery

This sentence really rubs me the wrong way: “As had been the case in the Azores and the Canary Islands, enslaved people from Africa provided a cost-effective answer.” It’s not the enslaved people that “provided” this answer, it was the Europeans who trafficked and enslaved people that did. Their wording puts the burden on the enslaved peoples themselves. It should say “trafficking people from Africa provided…” or “enslaving people from Africa provided….” to put the blame where it belongs: on Europeans. It also says things like “trading” and “importing” when talking about people instead of “trafficking.” The language here is gross.

Then it claims that the humans they trafficked to Virginia in 1619 may not have been enslaved at all but may have just been indentured servants. It says it “remains unclear” if they were “indentured servants” or “enslaved workers.” Abso-f-ing-lutely not. These were human trafficking victims that were, in fact, enslaved.

It also makes it sound like indentured servitude and slavery were “necessary” (they use that word) as if they couldn’t just, you know, hire and pay people fairly to work for them or do the work themselves. Again, the wording in this chapter is gross (except that they do say “enslaved person” instead of “slave.” This is the bare minimum, though, and everything else is not worded well).

The summary of the “Age of Exploration” at the end of this chapter is very whitewashed. It’s “trying” to tell “both sides,” but that’s like trying to tell “both sides” of the Holocaust. You can’t do that without lionizing the perpetrators. It says that Indigenous people died in “battles” and of “diseases” while completely ignoring invasion and genocide. It says of Africans that contact with Europeans “meant a lifetime of slavery,” again passive voice without blaming the perpetrators. It ends with “An understanding of the age must include both the heroism of the explorers and the tragedies that resulted from exploration.” There is no “heroism” here and these people were not “explorers.” This is an actively harmful way to tell history.

The teacher guide is full of the same racist, Eurocentric, and inaccurate drivel as the last and repeats the same BS as the student text itself, but more in depth. The books it recommends are all horrible and none of them are from Indigenous authors. It even recommends a Joy Hakim History of US book, which if you’ve read my other reviews, you’ll know exactly how I feel about that. If you’re new here, check out those reviews. The online resources it links to are more of the same junk.

I will end this review with the exact same conclusion as the last one: Overall, this unit is racist, Eurocentric, and historically inaccurate. I recommend staying away from Core Knowledge entirely (I have looked at and reviewed other levels, I will be posting those and have more to review). Core Knowledge is a conservative organization that was founded by a known racist and pushes American Exceptionalism, Eurocentrism, and nationalism. Being free doesn't make it safe to use. 

Not an Untouched Wilderness

One of the biggest US founding mythologies is the idea of an “untouched wilderness.” A core story that almost all of US history is then built upon. The “pilgrims” landed in an untouched wilderness and built something out of nothing. Lewis and Clark “blazed paths” through the “wilderness.” The pioneers went west into a wilderness and “tamed” the wilderness. They shaped the “unused” land the “Indians” had done nothing with and built this “great nation” from the wild. 

You’ll find this story in children's books, chapter books, educational resources, textbooks, documentaries, teacher resources and lesson plans, online resources and articles, etc. It is literally everywhere. I see it in basically every single curriculum that I review, so I decided to post this.

It is completely, 100%, a myth. There is no truth to it. It is a foundational US origin story, but it has absolutely no basis in reality. 

Where did this myth come from? It comes from a mixture of colonial ideology, romanticism, and legal policies created to erase Indigenous stewardship.

Colonial ideologies - after early Spanish contact and genocide, diseases spread throughout North America far beyond first contacts. Many died from genocide as well, which is usually discounted by the disease narrative. Make no mistake, millions of deaths were caused by genocide and conditions created to destroy people - disruption of food systems and subsistence food production, disruption of trade networks, malnutrition, starvation, loss of land and resources, loss of will to live, and enslavement. All of this also helped the diseases kill more people. All of this caused what has been called the “great dying,” in which so many Indigenous people died that the temperature of the earth cooled. By the time the English began invading and committing genocide, they were witnessing the aftermath of this - seeing previous cities, farms, and towns grown over and thought it was the natural state of things. Indigenous societies, politics, and power still had a MASSIVE influence on the colonies and the formation of the US, but the land the English invaded in the 1600s wasn’t the same as what it had been 100 years earlier.

Romanticism - if early invaders had told their families and friends in Europe the truth about Indigenous people, the land, and the colonies…far less people would have come. They had to “hype” it up quite a bit to sell the idea of coming to the Americas. Think about it...if someone wrote home saying "This place is terrible. We're starving, we have no idea how to farm or build adequate housing, the Natives don't want us here but sometimes they trade with us even though we keep stealing from them, everyone is dying...don't come." of course no one would send their families!

They needed romanticized stories of “virgin land” and “wilderness” to spread throughout Europe to attract more colonists. Later in the 17 and 1800s, people like John Muir and Teddy Roosevelt sold the idea of “virgin land” as central to an “American Identity.” They used the idea of wilderness to not only displace Indigenous people from their lands to create national parks, but also to create a symbol of purity and national pride. It was also used to reinforce racist ideologies and environmental hierarchies. 

Policies - The Wilderness Act of 1964 then essentially erased thousands of years of Indigenous land management and legally codified the mythology of “untouched wilderness” into US policy. This is just one example of legal policies that perpetuated this myth.

Now we will examine the realities of this land - This was not an “untouched wilderness.”

The number of people living in the Americas was somewhere between 75 to 112 million! This was about one fifth of the world’s population in the 1400s. There were more people living in the Americas than in Europe during Europe’s Middle Ages. Mesoamerica was one of the most densely populated places on Earth. There may have been over 1 million people living on the island of Hispaniola at one point. Estimates say 10 to 18 million people were living north of what is now called Mexico. We may never know how many people were actually living in North America at the time, but we do know that it was very populated.

We often hear that “the Indians lived in harmony with the land” or we simply “lived off the land” as is, with no mention of Indigenous landscape engineering - shaping the land to meet our needs in a way that doesn’t harm the natural systems. It’s always “the Indians lived with what the land gave them” and not “Indigenous people shaped the land to meet their needs." It should be the latter. Indigenous people were and are stewards of the land, not passive like the myths, but active and working within natural systems.

Agricultural practices covered more than ⅔ of what is now the US. The other ⅓ would be areas that don’t support agriculture like the arctic and areas like Death Valley. Many societies were hunter-farmer societies, rather than the often taught “hunter gatherers.” Around ⅔ of the world’s produce was originally cultivated by farmers and scientists in the Americas (North and South). The rest of the world did not have potatoes, tomatoes, corn, squash, chocolate, vanilla, several types of beans, chili peppers, and many more foods before the 1500s. Foods that were originally grown in the Americas have influenced food in all cultures of the world since then. Think about Thai food without chili peppers, Italian food without tomatoes, and French creme brulee without vanilla.

“But indigenous agriculture didn’t look like European agriculture, so colonizers did not recognize it as such. Indigenous agriculture largely was designed to work as a natural system, with the curves and fluctuations of the land. In Europe, agriculture always left scars on the land and was rigid and structured. Colonizers thought the land they encountered was natural. They had no understanding of indigenous practices and technologies that had shaped it, because they did not recognize indigenous people as capable of landscape engineering.”How is “Wilderness” a Colonial Construct? — Organeyez | by Naira de Gracia | Medium 

When the English colonizers invaded the east coast, they noted that they could drive their horse drawn wagons through the forest without obstruction, unlike the untended forests in Europe. They did not recognize the human touch needed to create such conditions due to racism. 

Agroforestry - forest farming - combines agricultural knowledges and practices with forestry technologies and management. One of the most famous examples in the Americas is the Amazon Rainforest - it is literally a man-made food forest. It did not occur naturally. Another great example is the forest gardens/food forests of the Pacific Northwest, in which these deliberately altered and managed forests promoted a much higher biodiversity than surrounding forest areas. Methods included controlled burns of undergrowth and promoting some forests natural fire cycles, soil enhancement, development of forest gardens which mimics natural ecosystems, and alley cropping. Ancient Wisdom Meets Modern Farming: Indigenous Agroforestry Success Stories - CSA Farm Directory 

IAN 

Pacific Northwest's ‘forest gardens’ were deliberately planted by Indigenous people | Science | AAAS 

The great grasslands of the west are also man made. Small pockets of grassland existed naturally, they were expanded by humans and carefully managed over thousands of years to benefit the bison and other animals of the region.

“With careful use of fire they could manage wild herds of bison without needing to domesticate them. In other words they managed the bison’s habitat rather than domesticating the bison. In many ways it was a much superior strategy. This because productive habitat then becomes full of a large variety of useful animals and plants. The most significant type of environmental change brought about by Pre-columbian human activity was the modification of vegetation. … Vegetation was primarily altered by the clearing of forest and by intentional burning. Natural fires certainly occurred but varied in frequency and strength in different habitats. The result of clearing and burning was, in many regions, the conversion of forest to grassland, savanna, scrub, open woodland, and forest with grassy openings.” -William M. Denevan, Imperfect balance: landscape transformations in the Precolumbian Americas

By modifying the vegetation and habitat to favor bison, they insured their food supply without needing to domesticate them.

Urban development also altered and shaped the land. Most Native nations were not historically nomadic, which is a common myth. Most stayed in one place and farmed, developed towns and cities, built roads, etc. Many also worked with metals - including copper, gold, silver, tin, bronze, platinum, and even a little iron from meteorites in Alaska.

Some of the largest cities in the world were in the Americas in the 13 and 1400s. These cities were full of culture, learning, and advancements for society. They were centers of trade for entire regions of the Americas. People developed arts, music, dance, and ceremonies. Cities and communities developed economies as well as political and social structures. There were vast trade networks that spanned both continents. Some cities and towns built road systems. Urban development also included agricultural practices, agroforestry, land management, and animal management. Mound builders built large earthen pyramids and effigy mounds which enhanced the natural landscape and also for utilitarian purposes like avoiding annual flooding (as well as religious, ceremonial, social, and political purposes). Ancestral Puebloans built large cities of adobe, consisting of multi-story buildings like apartments, irrigation canals so they could farm in the desert, and road systems.

Water systems - many nations developed advanced irrigation systems - rain catchment systems, step farming, dug canals (can still see some 1000+ yr old canals in the southwest), built aqueducts, etc. The Maya even developed advanced water purification systems. “Native people had running water when Europeans were still pooping in their bedrooms.” - Laura Martinez, MA

Even nomadic nations shaped the land - many practiced a form of flood plain agriculture - planting at certain times of the year in flood planes with rich soil, leaving the area, and coming back months later to ripe crops. Some practiced controlled burning and animal management as mentioned above. 

A few stories from history from a different perspective that show the lack of "wilderness":

After invading Peru, Hernando de Soto decided to invade the southeast part of what is now the United States. He was already known among his men as being a brutal “Indian killer.” In 1539, de Soto came to the area now known as Florida with a fleet of ships and an army of soldiers. Along with soldiers, he brought Catholic priests and average people from Spain. They immediately enslaved people from Timucuan, Muskogean, and Siouan nations. They traveled north through Florida attacking and fighting the nations they came across. De Soto continued to capture people to enslave as he went. They thought that there was gold northeast of where they were, so they traveled up through modern day Georgia. He continued north through South Carolina and North Carolina and then turned west to Tennessee. De Soto came across great mound cities when he invaded the southeast. Some people think that the mound cities had already declined, or been abandoned, before the Europeans came, but de Soto described these cities and the people in his writing. He saw them thriving. These cities did not decline until the 1600s, after Europeans came and did things like De Soto as well as spread diseases. De Soto burnt down whole towns and killed even peaceful people who approached them.

When the English colonized the southeast and created colonies in the 1600-1700s, the area still had many Native nations, but the mound cities were abandoned and the people had dispersed into the Southeastern nations like the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek, etc. by that time. What the English saw was what they called "wilderness" because the cities had been forced to disperse before they arrived. 

In 1534 a French invader named Jacques Cartier traveled down the St. Lawrence River from the Atlantic Ocean. He traveled to the area now known as the city of Quebec, Canada. The king of France wanted him to find gold and “precious things,” because the myths of great lands of gold had spread around Europe by this time. Even though it wasn’t true, Europeans believed there was a great land of gold here and were scrambling to get it. As he traveled down the river, he wrote that he saw big towns full of people and large fields of crops and orchards along the river. He saw great societies of healthy, thriving people. He encountered the Mi’kmaq, Montagnais, Algonquin, Huron and Abenaki nations. He said that he “claimed” the area for France without recognizing to the rights of the nations that he was seeing. He didn’t spend a lot of time interacting with the people he saw. He traded with some Mi’kmaq and captured two Haudenosaunee leaders and enslaved them as guides. He made several trips between France and the eastern part of Canada over the next 10 years. Each time, he was taking land and starting colonies and also looking for riches. On his second trip he came to the Haudenosaunee city of Stadacona where he saw a large thriving city. He captured their leader, Donnacona, and several other people. He took them back to France as slaves and they were never able to return to their homelands. They died in France. On his last voyage the nations fought back against him because he had taken captives and been cruel to them before. They fought the French to defend their nations. The French settlements did not last long and they returned to Europe. The French also brought diseases with them which spread and killed many people in the area. Cartier saw massive towns, not wilderness

Decades later in 1603 another Frenchman named Samuel de Champlain came to invade the same area. By this time, disease had killed many Native people and others fled the area because of the disorder left behind by the previous invaders. Champlain saw overgrown riverbanks and abandoned towns instead of the thriving cities and towns that had been there before. He called it a wilderness and spread stories about it being untouched. This fueled myths in Europe that this was a wilderness. 

Jamestown - this colony could not have survived without assistance from the Powhatan Confederacy. They experienced multiple starvation times when they broke promises and Native people cut them off from trade and diplomacy. They resorted to cannibalism during "starving times." If this had been a wilderness, Jamestown would have never survived.

Mayflower - These people were mostly religious extremists (that were NOT called "pilgrims") that came to the Americas to establish their own "holy kingdom" that only allowed one religion. They had already been living in Holland freely with no one persecuting them for over a decade by the time they got on the Mayflower. They were not fleeing persecution, and they were not seeking freedom of religion, as they didn't believe anyone else around them should have different beliefs than them. Patuxet, what they called Plymouth, was their third landing place in the Americas, not the first (and there was no Plymouth Rock). The second was Pamet, or what they called Provincetown Harbor. They sent out an exploratory party to look around the area in November 1620. That party came across an empty farm. It was empty because the Nauset people lived inland in the winter, this was their spring/summer home. The colonizers uncovered buried corn - corn that was in baskets and covered by woven mats, so it obviously belonged to someone and was set aside for a purpose. They stole that corn. Later they came back and stole more corn, pillaged the homes and stole items, and also robbed the nearby graves. You can actually read all of this in their own words, too, they wrote it down.

A month later they decided to move on, got back in the Mayflower, and ended up in Patuxet (Plymouth). Patuxet was empty because of a plague spread by other English people fishing in the area in 1616 to 1619. This plague killed tens of thousands of people and reduced the Wampanoag population by 90%. This is why "Plymouth" was empty when the Mayflower arrived. They colonizers took over existing infrastructure. They took over existing farmland, houses that were already built, traveled paths and roads that already existed, etc. Half of the colony still died that winter because they had no idea what they were doing or how to survive. Had the Wampanoag not stepped in that spring and eventually created a political alliance with them, none of them would have survived. Had this been an actual wilderness, none of them would have survived.

Lewis and Clark - the Corp of Discovery didn't discover anything, and they certainly didn't "blaze" any paths through a "wilderness." This was a military reconnaissance mission with the intention of spying for the purpose of invasion (expansion). They used man-made trails - trails that Indigenous people had used for thousands of years. They didn't make their own. They used maps (yes, Indigenous people had maps!) and detailed directions from Native nations to travel. They would have gotten lost otherwise. They were saved multiple times by different nations because they had no idea what they were doing and would have died without being rescued. Had this been a wilderness, they would not have even made it to the Pacific Ocean.

There are many, many more stories like this, these are just the highlights.

To reiterate - had this actually been an untouched wilderness, NONE of the invaders and colonizers would have survived and there literally would not be a United States. The mythology of wilderness actually negates the existence of the US, and yet stories in US history hinge upon that myth. When teaching about Native peoples it is vital to highlight the development, advancements, and technologies of Indigenous societies. It is also important to discuss these myths openly and honestly to help break down the stereotypes students have learned and internalized and to open their minds to a completely different understanding of history.

Core Knowledge social studies: Fifth Grade - part 1

 Core Knowledge - Fifth Grade social studies - part 1

As the grade levels go up, the amount of material to review also obviously goes up. Therefore, I am splitting the review into parts, focusing on one unit per part. I only reviewed the units that involve Native peoples, though I may do a short review of the other units as well. 

Unit 2: Maya, Aztec, and Inca Civilizations

Student reader: Chapter 1 is about the Maya and starts with the mythology of the “vanishing civilization” and calling it a mystery. This only serves to perpetuate stereotypes and is a completely inaccurate telling of history. There is no mystery, there was no “vanishing.” The curriculum claims that most of their culture “disappeared,” that they mysteriously “abandoned” their cities, and “mysteriously” transformed. It says it sounds like a “science fiction” movie. This is not only false but harmful to education about Native cultures and civilizations. It also claims they only thrived until 900 CE and every mention of dates simply claims it ended in 900 CE. This is false. It also calls the Maya “one of the first great civilizations of the Americas.” This completely ignores thousands of years of history and peoples. The Maya are not one of the first, they’re just one of the most well known.

The Maya simply reorganized politically and culturally. We can call these time periods the Classic period up from 200 CE to around 900 CE and the Post-Classic period from 900 CE up until Spanish invasion. The civilization simply hit its peak around 900 CE. Maya civilization continued to thrive in the Post-Classic period. Just because they moved, dispersed, reorganized, and changed doesn’t mean they “vanished.” There was a major drought, one that hadn’t been seen for thousands of years, that caused the dispersal of people from some of the major cities. However, other Maya cities like Tulum and Chichen Itza, grew and thrived in the Post-Classic period. Environmental, cultural, and political changes happened around the 900-1000 CE time period that led to the reorganization of peoples. No one vanished, nor did their civilization.

This curriculum claims that they vanished after 900 CE but then says that there are still Mayan speaking people in the area today. If they vanished, there wouldn’t still be Maya people today. Not only are the Mayan languages still spoken today by over 7 million people today, but their cultures also still exist. There are intact Maya communities all over Central America today.  They never “vanished.”

The curriculum claims “American explorers” in the 1800s had heard stories about “mysterious” ruins in the rainforest. These were never “mysterious” as the living Maya people always knew they were there and what the history was. Turning common knowledge of a people into something “mysterious” for another culture only exotifies and others the people. It is part of harmful stereotyping.

It claims their pyramids were simply religious rather than also acknowledging the political aspects of these buildings. It calls Mayan writing “mysterious” and a “code” rather than a complex writing system. It calls Maya homes “huts” despite the fact that they built great cities. It says their calendar was “almost as accurate” as modern calendars, but in reality they made calendars that are more accurate. It says that archaeologist “think” the Maya played a ball game. This isn’t something that anyone “thinks,” it is known in history and in the cultural revival of the Mesoamerican Ball Game among Maya, Mexica, and others today. The only sources cited here are western archeologists instead of actually getting information from Maya people themselves. It just keeps saying archaeologists and “experts” THINK things instead of stating the information as known facts. It makes no mention that this game is played today.

Then is the issue of “human sacrifice.” The curriculum brings up human sacrifice as a result of losing the ball game. The problem is – this terminology is used to demonize certain cultures and justify brutal conquest and genocide which killed millions more people than human sacrifice in Mesoamerica. It makes no mention of the idea that it wasn’t common or a large number of people, the people were usually criminals and enemies (death penalty, anyone? executions were common in Medieval Europe), and many religious ceremonies involved only animal sacrifice and ritual bloodletting (consensual) that did not kill the person. Human sacrifice was practiced all over the world but is only ever mentioned in curricula about the Americas at these grade levels and sometimes even at all. It also never mentions human sacrifice when talking about European civilizations or by Euro-Americans despite the fact that it was quite common – just under different names and terms. Is it not human sacrifice to hang, burn, or crucify people in the name of religion? Did the Europeans not carry out brutal executions in the name of their god regularly? Did they not come up with dozens of ways to torture people for entertainment? Is that not "blood thirsty" and "savage?" Only using the term “human sacrifice” when talking about cultures like the Maya and Mexica (Aztec) serves to further the demonization and stereotyping of these cultures as being “uncivilized” and “evil.” It is Eurocentric and harmful. There is no reason to mention this in fifth grade or without careful analysis. Maya Religion, Gods, Cosmos and religious rituals (scroll to the section on human sacrifice.) It's also important to note that almost all information we have about "human sacrifice" in these civilizations comes from the Spanish who had ulterior motives to justify their genocide. Very little comes from these civilizations themselves, and what does come from their art was generally used to intimidate opponents rather than tell history, and from their writing in the 1500s which was heavily influenced by the Spanish. Most resources on this topic are unreliable. 

Another issue here is that they use words like “groups” instead of tribes or nations. You can read more about the issue with that word here: Native American Curriculum Review: Thoughts on Educational Standards and Textbooks - the word "groups"

They also do not capitalize the word “Native” when talking about people. Always capitalize words like Native and Indigenous when talking about people. Another important note – Maya refers to people, civilization, culture, etc. Mayan refers to language. The curriculum does mostly get this correct.

Chapter 2 is supposed to be about scientific achievements but starts with stating that their religious beliefs gave them an “unclear view” of the world. Do all religious beliefs not do that? Core Knowledge doesn’t claim this about Christianity or Europeans. Why say that at all? Again, this just continues to make them appear “uncivilized” and perpetuates stereotypes. It also states “they didn’t even have the wheel.” We need to stop teaching children that the wheel is a measure of advancement in history. It’s not. Different cultures advance in different areas depending on multiple factors including geography, resources, politics, religion, cultural values and concepts, etc. There was no need for wheels in the ancient Maya environment and society, that doesn’t mean they were not advanced. There is absolutely no reason to point out that they didn’t use wheels other than to again make them look “uncivilized.” This is a great example of racism and Eurocentrism – using European metrics of development to evaluate and judge other cultures and civilizations.

It claims they didn’t use “scientific tools” to calculate how many days are in a year. This is false. They used their own scientific tools to do so. It again calls Maya homes “huts” instead of houses. It calls their cultural customs “odd” which is insulting.

Then it goes back to the false claim of “vanishing” or disappearing. It claims the civilization ended in 900 CE, which it did not. It claims Mayan writing “mysteriously stopped” in that time period, which it did not. It says they “left their cities” instead of saying they moved to and built new cities. It claims the Maya had “been gone for years” by the time the Spanish invaded, but that’s actually what caused the decline of the Maya civilization in the first place. It then says no one actually knows what happened, but again…we do know. We do know factors that caused the shift between the Classical and Post-Classical periods, we do know what caused further decline in the 1500s (Spanish invasion), we do know what happened to them since then and that they still exist.

What if British history was told the same way Maya history is told? - Maya Archaeologist - Dr Diane Davies

What if people told European history like they told Native American history? | An Indigenous History of North America

Moving on to the “Aztecs.”

“Aztec” is a term that was popularized by European scholars in the 1800s and has no real meaning. It can refer to the triple alliance (Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan), the people (Mexica), or a language group (Nahuatl). In general it encompasses the Nahuatl speaking peoples of central Mexico and the Mexica people. I will use Mexica when referring to the people rather than “Aztec.”

Chapter 3 refers to the people exclusively as Aztec rather than using historically accurate names. This chapter almost entirely focuses on the mythology of human sacrifice again. Read above for some of my thoughts on “human sacrifice.” This chapter claims sacrifices were “regular and generous.” The population of the cities and the Triple Alliance would not have been able to grow to such significant numbers if sacrifices were “regular and generous.” The only real records about Mexica sacrifices come from the Spanish, who lied and exaggerated to justify invasion and genocide. They even claimed the Mexica sacrificed 1000 people a day and in one ceremony killed 80,000 people in 4 days. Both of these claims are mathematically impossible. The reality is that only relatively few human remains in central Mexico have been identified as having been sacrificed (only 126 in Templo Mayor) which is much lower than numbers sacrificed by Europeans in their own religious rituals. Another perspective is that most sacrifices should considered casualties of war since it was culturally more important to capture an enemy in battle than to kill them. “There is no such thing as ‘Human Sacrifice’” The actual regular and generous offerings to the gods were gifts of jewelry, sacred plants, foods, and the like as well as animal sacrifices and ritual consensual bloodletting, not "human sacrifice."

"Although Aztec political life has been assumed to revolve around...human sacrifice...the annals indicate that this notion was never paramount for them." - Camila Townsend (I know she is not Indigenous, but her work is respected.)

This chapter portrays Mexica society as literally revolving around human sacrifice, warfare, and violence and that's about it. This portrayal is not only completely mythological, but actively harmful. 

Chapter 4 the description of how large the city of Tenochtitlan was isn’t bad here, but the images make it look like the city was small. Tenochtitlan was one of the largest cities in the world in the 1400s. It also doesn’t do justice to the description of the city at all in the “city tour.” It minimizes the chinampas (gardens) despite them being one of the most sophisticated forms of agriculture in history. It makes the education system sound scary and entirely about warfare and even says something about you having “tough teachers” over the years but you’ve "never had one that practices human sacrifices." I rolled my eyes hard here. It minimizes the writing system to “pictographs.” It says the sound of the marketplace is a “ruckus,” but they don’t describe European marketplaces the same way. It inaccurately lists bananas as being a food in Mesoamerica when it’s from Asia and was not in the Americas for hundreds more years. The city tour continues to harp on the mythology of widespread human sacrifice; every section mentions it. It makes no mention of sophisticated water systems and aqueducts, indoor bath houses and toilets, hygiene practices and cleanliness, libraries, medical knowledge and care, scientific knowledge and invention, etc. It makes no mention of how the Spanish marveled at how immaculately clean the city was. In contract, similarly sized cities in Europe, like Paris, were disgusting - raw sewage throw into the streets, animal blood from slaughterhouses mixed in with mud, streets made of literally just mud, sewage, and blood that they had to walk through, and stench so bad it could be smelled for miles...no wonder diseases were rampant in Europe and not in the Americas. It almost entirely focuses on violence, weapons, “fierce warriors,” and human sacrifice as if that’s all that the Mexica ever cared about. It reduces an amazing civilization to a trope of violence.

A note on houses vs huts – houses in the Americas are called "huts" throughout this curriculum, described as being made of mud and straw, or stone "huts" with thatch roofs, etc. In the SAME TIME PERIOD, houses in Europe are called houses and cottages, described as being made with mud and straw, thatched roofs, etc. This is a great illustration of how racism and Eurocentrism show up in this curriculum in an almost “hidden” way if you don’t know what you’re looking for.

Chapter 5 is about the Inca. It starts with a story of violence yet again. There are so many things you could focus on when learning about the Maya, the Mexica, or the Inca, yet this curriculum almost always focuses on violence. This is another example of racism and Eurocentrism.

When talking about daily Incan life it again calls their homes, which were well built and made of stone, “huts” while never describing stone homes in Europe as “huts.” Then for absolutely no reason it says that their homes smelled bad. This reminds me of reading Joy Hakim’s horribly racist opinions in the History of Us curriculum, but I digress.

Chapter 6 focuses on Incan engineering and their amazing road system. However, it commits the typical Eurocentric sin of comparing the development of non-European cultures to European metrics of development. It again points out how the Incans didn’t have wheels or animals to pull carts, despite already mentioning that llamas were used as pack animals. Wheeled carts would made absolutely no sense in the environment of the Andes mountains. They didn’t make wheeled carts because it wouldn’t have worked there, not because they weren’t advanced. They did, in fact, invent the wheel but it was largely used on children’s toys. It then talks about the Incan suspension bridges, which were an engineering marvel and also explain why wheeled carts made no sense in their environment. It does call the bridges engineering marvels, which is nice. But then it claims the suspension bridge over the Apurimac was no longer used by the Inca past 1890. This is incorrect. It is still rebuilt every year by the Quechua people of the region and used to this day. They did not disappear either. They’re not just “the people of Peru” as this curriculum states. I have been to the Andes, I have been in these communities…they’re Indigenous and they still carry their ancestor’s knowledge and pass it down through the generations.

Chapter 7 is the final chapter in this unit and is about the Spanish invasion in the 1500s. It starts with a racist story about the “Aztec” being amazed by Spanish ships sailing in on the coast and calling them “floating mountains.” It also says they “knew nothing of sailing ships.” This makes no sense. The Caribbean and Mesoamerica were one of the most densely populated places on Earth in the 1400s. The Caribbean, the Gulf coast, and the coast of Central America were full of Indigenous port towns and cities, seafaring cultures, and had a vast economic trade network throughout the ocean. Boats were coming and going from the coast constantly. These boats were not “canoes.” They were ocean going vessels. Some Indigenous peoples of the coastal regions made sails even. The Maya had boats as large as Viking long ships. Spanish described these ships as holding around 50 people, because yes, the Maya still existed when the Spanish came, unlike what this curriculum says. The Spanish encountered the Maya. Tulum and other Maya port cities continued to exist throughout the 1500s. Boats of various sizes, including large boats, were common in the region. The Mexica knew what large boats looked like. The Mexica described the Spanish ships as “floating houses” (not “mountains”) because they were a different kind of ship than they were familiar with, not because they didn't know what a sailing ship was. 

The curriculum then also repeats the completely debunked racist story that the Mexica thought the Spanish were gods and that they brought gifts to the Spanish to please them and worship them. This has been disproven multiple times over. Repeating this in history texts is not only historically inaccurate, it’s racist. It is used to make the Mexica look ignorant and backwards. The Mexica Didn't Believe the Conquistadors Were Gods - JSTOR Daily

The story at the beginning of this chapter is just racist, plain and simple.

It calls Cortes a Spanish “explorer,” but as I have discussed in blog posts previously, the early Europeans that came to the Americas were not “explorers” at all, but slave traders and treasure hunters. They came to conquer, not explore. The curriculum uses terms like “conquistador,” “conquest,” and “conqueror” without ever explaining that this means to invade, kill, and destroy. They use those words as if they’re just normal nice sailors. It says he wanted to spread Catholicism and get rich. That may be true, but this is an extremely whitewashed way of saying invade, commit genocide, and take over. It then says Cortes “found” a Native woman to serve as a translator. He did not “find her,” she was enslaved along with multiple other women.

The story claims the Spanish had superior weapons and that's why they won. Guns in that time were not superior by any means. The Mexica had obsidian swords (obsidian blades embedded into wood) that could cut the head off a horse. The were experts with atlatl (throwing spears). They used bows and arrows. Spanish guns were quite ineffective – they didn’t shoot straight, they were heavy and slow to load, and difficult to fire (and could only fire once at a time). The Spanish mostly used swords and lances. The Mexica used atlatl, macuahuitl (obsidian swords), and arrows. Ultimately it was the fact that the Spanish wore extreme armor and rode horses that gave them some advantage, not their weapons. The curriculum makes no mention of the Spanish having to fight their way out of Tenochtitlan because the Mexica were formidable opponents. It makes the Mexica sound completely weak and ineffective against the Spanish when they weren’t.

It also says that the disease smallpox swept through the city which is ultimately why the Spanish were able to conquer it (that and using Indigenous enemies of the Mexica to help them, which of course they then betrayed and violently conquered as well). This may be true, but it’s also possible that the Spanish intentionally poisoned the people of Tenochtitlan which lead to this downfall. 

The reality is there were only about 1,000 Spanish against a city of 200,000 people. The reason they won is because they had around 200,000 INDIGENOUS warriors from other Native nations around them that fought alongside the Spanish to conquer their enemies, the Mexica. The Native nations that did this essentially thought they would use the Spanish for their political gain and then give them the boot. The whole idea of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" concept. The Spanish could not have ever conquered the Mexica, even with disease (or food poisoning) on their side, by themselves. The Spanish saw the political gain of allying with enemies of the Mexica. This was all politics. Once they did that, they then stabbed their allies in the back by violently conquering them as well (with diseases on their side, which they fully recognized). This is not a story of how great the Spanish were, rather a story of how untrustworthy, greedy, and blood thirsty they were. 

The chapter then basically says the same racist story about the Inca…they didn’t know what ships were, they were scared of the Spanish, etc. It does mention disease spreading through the Incan empire ahead of the Spanish, which is true. And it at least calls Pizzaro’s massacre of the Inca a massacre and not a battle.

To end the chapter it talks about invasion and genocide as if it’s positive because they “ended human sacrifice” and “brought Christianity.” They didn’t end human sacrifice as the Spanish were well known to routinely sacrifice Indigenous people in the name of their god. There is no positive way to spin genocide as this tries to do.

The teacher guide is largely full of the same issues as the student text. When it comes to recommended additional resources, they do not recommend any Own Voices resources or resources by any experts on the subject. All of the recommended books are problematic in the same ways as this curriculum. It does, however, suggest some online resources from the National Museum of the American Indian which is a great resource. They offer some good online resources for the Maya calendar and math. However, they didn’t suggest the NMAI resources on the Inca, which exist and are just as good as the Maya resources.

It also claims that everything we know about these civilizations comes from archaeologists and by studying ancient ruins. This is false. There are Maya, Mexica and other Nahuatl speaking peoples (Aztec), and Quechua (Inca) people that still live today all over Mexico, Central, and South America. They not only maintain languages, but also the rich cultures, traditions, religions, and values of their ancestors. These people are not extinct, as this curriculum and teacher guide claims. We know a lot about their ancestors from THEM. They are the experts on their cultures and peoples, not archaeologists.

Another major issue I want to highlight in the teacher guide – it directly states that ONLY three great civilizations existed in the Americas before European invasion (which they Eurocentrically call the “Age of Exploration,”) and these are the three. There were many great civilizations before these three and at the same time, and not just in Mesoamerica and South America. There were great civilizations in both places BEFORE the Maya, “Aztec,” and Inca, including Caral, Moche, Olmec, Zapotec, and many more. There were great civilizations in various places north of modern-day Mexico, including the Mississippian, Haudenosaunee, Ancestral Puebloan, and many others. To reduce the Americas to only three great civilizations is racist and inaccurate.

Overall, this unit is racist, Eurocentric, and historically inaccurate. I recommend staying away from Core Knowledge entirely (I have looked at and reviewed other levels, I will be posting those and have more to review). Core Knowledge is a conservative organization that was founded by a known racist and pushes American Exceptionalism, Eurocentrism, and nationalism. It being free doesn't make it safe to use. 

I'M BACK!

I am sorry for my absence. I have not had the time or energy to devote to this blog in several years. I have been very busy with many things, among them was working full time for the first time in years and also helping to develop the Texas high school American Indian/Native Studies course. I am one of the primary authors of the course and teacher materials and the author of the custom student materials for the course. Our team has also been fighting an uphill battle against the SBOE to get the course approved as a state TEKS course. 

I am now in a place where I can put time into this blog again. I am now a substitute teacher for a local district and plan to get my Texas teacher certification to become a full-time teacher. I still plan to continue teaching online as well.

So look for new content! I am currently working on a review of a curriculum I have addressed before but only posted one grade level. I have several curricula and educational resources that I would like to address on here, especially as they become more popular. Feel free to request a review of curricula, books, or educational resources.