Textbooks vs. Internet

In our public education system, we are still using textbooks that were written 5-10 years ago. This seems disadvantageous to me.

When I was teaching 4th grade in the system, we were still told to teach the old Christopher Columbus story. Everyone knows this myth. Christopher Columbus sailed across the ocean to find a new land, he did, and he was a hero. The students that have sat through my Social Studies classes see this story entirely different. They researched the man and not the myth. They came to their own conclusions, as to who Columbus really was as a person. They decided that Columbus never found a new land! Columbus stumbled upon a land that had been found hundreds of thousands of years prior by the Paleo-Indians, or so we call them.

The most powerful idea to put into a child's psyche, is the idea that they can direct their own learning and they can be responsible for the information that they deem important.