Abstract
Jeff had been angry. Recounting what had happened to him for the fifth graders in his St. Paul, Minnesota classroom, Jeff exclaimed, "I'd been cheated! How could Mr. Harvey and Ms. Binky have taught me such different stories about Christopher Columbus?" Mr. Harvey, Jeff's fifth grade teacher, had presented Columbus as a hero with the saying, "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue." A decade later, Professor Binky, one of Jeff's college instructors, had presented Columbus as a villain with the saying, "In 1493, he stole all that he could see." Jeff had liked both teachers, but each had focused on Columbus's life from only one perspective. In offering a one-dimensional history, they did little to help their students learn "to read, reconstruct, and interpret the past," as called for in the National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies. When Jeff began his own career as a social studies educator, that realization had made him feel angry.