During this section of history I delve into issues with my kids that may seem "beyond" their 5th grade understanding. However, through the years I have found them to have not only greater insight to many of these sensitive subjects than I had perceived, I have found myself learning more from their innocent observations of a sometimes cruel humanity.
I believe that it is important for students to see all sides of events that we, as adults with our own biases and viewpoints, tend to see one sided.
We talk a lot about the exchanging of ideas, cultures, and products between the New World and Europe. I remind the kids about what we have learned about the World at this time, it was a very different place. .. (I will spare you the history lessons, but the kids will agree, this is a FASCINATING time in earth's history!)
Kids (and adults) need this understanding of each culture/beliefs of the time before diving into the clash of three worlds. It is not fair to simply give kids the impression:
- All Europeans were cruel and greedy people (implying no one else was)
- Natives were all innocent and murdered by all Europeans
- Europeans captured Africans (out of the blue) and made them slaves based on color, etc.
To demonstrate all of this, I take the kids through a Columbia Exchange simulation: We get into three groups = Europe, The Americas (both North and South), and Africa. For a visual, we connect the "continents" with red string when items were traded.
We talk about how many of the items they have traveled "accidentally" between the continents. These items included many livestock that the Europeans brought over (example: Coronado brought over pigs and they multiplied in the wild exponentially!), plants, and diseases - most notably Small Pox. To demonstrate the severity of disease upon the native population we had a "European Explorer" from the Europe table trade a picture of a horse with a native for a few natural items. As the cards were passed, the disease was "given" thus representing the spread of the disease. Since disease roughly killed 2/3 of the native population, we had 2/3 of the table "die" and sit at another table. Next, the Europeans discovered how well tobacco, cotton, sugar cane, and coffee grew in the New World and sent men to farm it. Three "Europeans" travel to the new world and enslave Native Americans, but one Native dies from disease, another runs away because they know the land well and where other tribes are, and one dies from being over worked because there is hardly anyone working any more! Now, the Europeans don't have anyone to help them in their fields ... so they turn to Africa (table 3)... who it must be noted, have slavery already occurring on their continent. We had the African "king" send some their soldiers to a remote "village" and gather slaves for the Europeans and send them to the "New World" table to work the farms, in return the King got weapons and rum. Because of all the new products (particularly corn and potatoes) which are coming from the New World, as well as the wealth they are now acquiring, people in Europe are living longer and healthier lives. Students who had "died" now go to the "Europe Table" as babies that were now living into adulthood.
Stay tuned for the first ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS!