I am at the library, having just studied for my PRAXIS for about an hour - I read about European and American history, starting with the rise of Catholicism in Europe, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the beginning of exploration and later on colonization. I stopped at the end of the American Revolution and the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

And seriously, the Europeans were deplorable! I mean obviously this is stuff that I learned before, throughout my pre-college schooling, but reading it now in my mid-twenties is much different. The way that the text introduces and describes institutions like indentured servitude, slavery, the conquering of civilizations like the Aztecs, the Incans, not to mention the Native Americans... it's impartial, of course, as it is an educational text, but I just can't imagine teaching this stuff to children without inserting my own personal and liberal opinions about it.

I know it's sort of fruitless to be riled up about things that happened more than 300 years ago, but what made the Spanish think that they had the right to be invading and conquering peoples who had been living in the South American continent for years already? What the heck? And for what - to rob them of the natural resources that they happened to be sitting on?

Do kids really learn this and just sit there and think it's okay?

P.S. I'm sitting about 15 feet from the closest stacks and I can totally smell the books.