Introduction

            When interviewing kindergarteners for the History through a Child’s Eye assignment, we asked them what they knew about Colonists and Native Americans. The answers were indicative of how we teach colonization, especially in the early grades. One boy did not know, and the other child said that the Colonists “wear bonnets and dresses” and "The Native Americans don’t wear clothes like pilgrims do, and have feathers on their heads.” This indicated to us that the relationship between European colonists and Native Americans had been taught, but only in a superficial, Eurocentric way.

            Our chapter aims to look at the lives of Native Americans in the colony that became North Carolina. We also aim to give a fair representation of other colonial peoples, including slaves, brought to work the plantations. This chapter of the Flexbook focuses on the daily lives and community structures children in the North Carolina colony experienced.

            Upon searching Harcourt Horizons – North Carolina, the fourth grade textbook at New Hope Elementary, in an effort to locate information on the Colonial Era in North Carolina, we were not surprised to find a very Eurocentric lens to the story. When Native Americans were mentioned at all, it was through the focus of uncultured savages. Tellingly, when the textbook looked at Roanoke, the colony that disappeared off the coast of the Outer Banks of North Carolina, the book said that while no one knows what happened to the colony, they may have been murdered by neighboring Native American tribes. Additionally, though the text mentioned that Colonists faced challenges, it neglected to address the challenges universal to living in a colony. This shows that there is much of the story left in the dark, and needs addressing.  The unbalanced approach, which seemed to glorify the colonists by glossing over, or leaving out the ugly parts of colonization, such as slavery, introduction of new diseases, and general unfair treatment of Native populations resulted in a Eurocentrically biased view of the  rest of the colony’s population.

            Our class does not look at colonization as part of the kindergarten Standard Course of Study, so we do not know how our teacher would have treated the topic. However, in interviewing our students, we found a great deal of confusion. As mentioned above, one girl had a basic (though skewed) knowledge of colonialism. However, another student had no knowledge of what the colonization of America meant. In an effort to address these gaps in knowledge we will try to present fair and balanced perspectives of history at this time. Because colonization is not specifically addressed in the North Carolina Standard Course of Study for kindergarten, we will look at how communities and family roles have changed over time.

            New Hope’s school library had a wealth of sources, and surprisingly, there was great variety. We found books about slavery, and slave conditions, as well as a few fairly balanced accounts of colonial life. Examples of these are African Americans in the 13 Colonies by Deb Kent, and Life in a Colonial Town by Sally Isaacs.  These were two decent reads providing alternative views to colonial life. The problem with these books, overall, was their accessibility. Perhaps an advanced fifth grader could read these books with some enjoyment, but a few books were so packed with dense wordiness that even two college students couldn’t easily get information from them. Clearly, books like these will not help our kindergartners. Though we found many books, a few presented the Colonial Era in a format that makes the time period seem boring, which defeats the purpose of learning for the sake of enjoyment.  Reading about history should be an exciting and accessible experience for everyone because through independent reading students can have the opportunity to  experience history through multiple perspectives. Unfortunately only a few books we found fulfilled the accessibility requirement.

     There is a lot of the Colonial Era story that has been left untaught to students.  The vastly Eurocentric perspective that is often taught only considers the tip of the iceberg that formed the foundations of North Carolina, and American society as we know it.