What if we changed the name of the holiday to Indigenous Peoples Day?
If we changed the name, we could tell a different, perhaps more ethical story. Columbus day celebrates the spirit of adventure and discovery that allowed generations of Americans to live and thrive: so “boldly pursuing new discoveries, despite great odds, creates new possibilities for future generations.” This is a “controlling idea” that values Columbus. In his chapter “Structure and Meaning,” Robert McKee defines “controlling idea” as a “story's ultimate meaning expressed through the action and aesthetic emotion of the last act's climax” (113). The story here is the story behind Columbus Day.
An idea that counters this, and that reinforces the value of Columbus Day, would be: “cowering in fear leads us to fail to accomplish anything of note, which leaves us making no difference and being forgotten.” There’s a set of controlling and counter ideas that piggyback on this: “if we fail to recognize the achievements of our ancestors, and the benefits we get from them, we would lose our pride in our origins, lose the ability to emulate their greatness, and then fail to make history.” Therefore, “when we acknowledge the greatness of our ancestors by acknowledging their accomplishments, we participate in their greatness.”
However, to listen to this story, to be caught up in its controlling idea and its value, requires us to ignore everything that does not fit, what we might call a “controlling value” that opposes the value we celebrate in Columbus Day. For instance: “when you honor and and wish to emulate someone who does not deserve it (a treacherous criminal), doing so makes you party to the crimes committed--genocide and theft, and ultimately justifying these crimes.” That’s a counter idea or “context” of a controlling value.
A controlling idea or “purpose” to that context might be: “Exposing crimes as crimes--restoring justice--allows those who have been wronged to right those wrongs, so that those people might get back the history that has been taken away from them.”
When I was in elementary school, I had no idea that actions of Columbus lead to genocide and theft of life and property from thousands. When we are educating youth about Columbus, we don’t have to ignore the horrible things he had done: we can tell both stories. Teachers should include those events. Doing so would benefit their students academically. They would hear the stories that have been silenced.
If you are planning to be an educator, how will you deal with Columbus Day with your students?