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.