In response to “Elementary Students End Columbus Day at Potsdam Central School” which appeared on the front page of the Nov. 27-Dec. 3 issue of North Country This Week: You have got to be kidding me! This is not good!

This is like saying that Apple and Microsoft are bad because they sell the phones that are causing many of our youth to become depressed, anxious and suicidal. Columbus was the equivalent of high tech in his day. He was not seeking gold and treasure, he was seeking a new shorter route to the Orient in order to expedite trade. He died impoverished, poor. Maybe others did seek treasure afterwards, but Columbus was a sailor and explorer who did an amazingly brave thing when he set out westward across the Atlantic Ocean.

I don't recall reading about any peoples then living in the Western Hemisphere ever accomplishing sailing eastward across the Atlantic Ocean and discovering Europe or Africa. That is because they did not possess the technology to do so.

And as for Columbus "discovering" America, he did for the Europeans. Sure, there were people living there already, but he discovered it for those in Europe who did not know it was there.

These students are being lied to. Columbus was not a bad person, as they are being told. He opened a door, and should not be made the face of anything bad that happened after his 3 voyages to the New World (from a European point of view).

These three teachers are towing the leftist line- indoctrinating our students to the speaking points of the left so that they grow up to be good obedient leftist activists to go out and protest and create anarchy as per Rules of Radicals, the basic leftist playbook.

This is an example of leftist creep into our society, erasing our glorious history, denigrating our family values, undermining our Constitution, and downplaying individual responsibility and freedoms. I get it that the history teacher father did not agree with his child's opinion because he probably actually knows history and is not making it up like the three PCS teachers are, and are brainwashing their students to believe.

Local school boards need to look to the long-term effects of such misguided quick decisions, and parents need to speak up and protect their children from such a leftist (socialist) agenda.

Susan Mattison

Lawrence