Thinking for Students

We were discussing the question, “How should we remember Columbus?” About five minutes into the discussion, a student passionately argued that Columbus was not just “one bad actor,” but was actually a small part of a colonial power, “killing people and taking their rights all over the place.” I was so excited. This was a point I’d hoped my students would raise, and he’d done it! Now, I wanted us to explore his point more deeply through the texts that we’d read. However, the texts that I gave students only briefly note that Columbus was sent by the royalty of Spain—meaning they would have to make complex inferences to connect the texts to Columbus, Spanish Royalty, and the colonial system. I wanted to ask the perfect question to help them make these inferences. I could have asked the central question again and then asked follow-up questions to get us to think through the larger power structure at-play. I could also have asked why it matters that Columbus was not acting alone and then return to the central question. With both of these options I worried that students wouldn’t be able to make these connections because they were struggling just to make more basic connections between texts and the central question. I felt stuck. I wanted to explore this really important concept about colonialism as a system of power, which we were going to explore further in subsequent units. However, I worried that to explore the concept through the texts, I would have to do most of the thinking instead of the students.