Many of us have celebrated Thanksgiving by dressing as Pilgrims and Indians and sharing a potluck at school. But Limbaugh is not alone in using Thanksgiving to score some political points. You may remember celebrating Thanksgiving by tracing your hand to create the outline of a turkey and hearing the story of the harvest meal celebrated by Pilgrims and American Indians in 1621. History.com offers 16 videos covering known, and less well known, aspects of the celebration. The Zinn Education Project Thanksgiving Day celebrates not justice or equality but aggression and enslavement. It is, however, absolutely the ideal time for a school community to come together and do any number of activities that maximize the spirit of America’s purest holiday. I’m not sure this is an improvement. Find out about the history of the Thanksgiving Parade, the first football broadcast, Mayflower myths or pumpkin pie. Despite their historical inaccuracies, which warrant acknowledgment and correction, lessons on Thanksgiving in elementary school were designed to be celebrations of friendship, gratitude, discovery, and other virtues that seem to be in short supply these days. Edward Winslow’s December 11, 1621 Our harvest being gotten in, our governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a special manner rejoice together after we had gathered the fruit of our labors. We are North Carolina’s Most Trusted and Influential Source of Common Sense. The John Locke Foundation was created in 1990 as an independent, nonprofit think tank that would work “for truth, for freedom, and for the future of North Carolina.” The Foundation is named for John Locke (1632-1704), an English philosopher whose writings inspired Thomas Jefferson and the other Founders. Rather, state standards direct educators to teach about national holidays as they occur throughout the year. History.com reported that Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the Thanksgiving holiday as “Thanksgiving and praise” in 1863. Historian Perry Miller points out in his 1953 book, But the story of cooperation and celebration that schoolchildren in the 18th, 19th, and 20th century learned is not necessarily the story that children will hear today.In fact, the North Carolina Standard Course of Study does not mandate that teachers deliver a lesson about Thanksgiving at all. The idea that, at its core, Thanksgiving celebrates the brutality of Europeans who settled in the New World is a page out of the radical Howard Zinn school of historical thought. Michael Zamora/AP It affirms the genocidal beliefs that destroyed millions of Native American people and their cultures from the Pilgrim landings to the 20th century.Today, teachers are encouraged to address conflicts between colonists and American Indians in their Thanksgiving Day lessons. If so, how? A teacher hangs up a brightly colored paper turkey painted by her students in 2007 in Corpus, Christi, Texas. Has the way you've talked about the holiday changed over the years? Includes a printable book about the seasons, internet research that integrates math, and the turkey traditions at the White House. But holidays like Thanksgiving and Columbus Day can be … The N.C. Department of Public Instruction offers a list of resources for Both the Separatists and Puritans were rigid fundamentalists who came here fully intending to take the land away from its Native inhabitants and establish a new nation, their “Holy Kingdom.” The Plymouth colonists were never concerned with “freedom of religion” for anyone but themselves.Similar interpretations can be found by searching the “truth about Thanksgiving” on the internet. Thanksgiving Day, annual national holiday in the United States and Canada celebrating the harvest and other blessings of the past year.