Teaching What Really Happened Analysis

As a future elementary educator, I am dedicated to the well being for the youth of our country. This includes teaching young children how to be engaged, devoted citizens in our society. Through social studies and the social sciences, children can learn about relevant values they will need to be successful. These values include, but are not limited to, developing citizenship, understanding others, growing through knowledge and discovery and building self-efficacy. Educators need to emphasize how important each and every individual is in our history. In the classroom, children learn about history while simultaneously being a part of it. Students have the opportunity to learn about where we have come from and where we can go. Even though the study of history has been a major part of our education, the actual method of teaching it has presented several limitations to our youth. Teaching What Really Happened is an excellent source that presents relevant issues regarding history education and proposes countless solutions to these pitfalls in education.
History as a weapon is a pitfall that is very common and easy to become a culprit and a victim of. For students, they cannot control the curriculum that they are taught. Unfortunately, they have no way of identifying false information if they have little to no knowledge of the subject. For example, as a student I looked forward to Christopher Columbus Day because I enjoyed celebrating this phenomenal event in history. Each time I heard the story, it seemed even more incredible because the older I became, the more I was able to understand how remarkable his accomplishments were. However, it was not until ninth grade that my history teacher ruined everything I had once believed about Christopher Columbus. This moment was very difficult to understand as a student and an aspiring teacher. How could my teachers betray me for so many