Of course in US schools, the genocide of the indigenous inhabitants is usually whitewashed; the curriculum sort of leaves you with the impression that North America was some vast, sparsely-populated land the white folks were just looking for some "elbow room". But the European colonial period, here that's usually just colored blobs on the map. I'm curious as to how this is taught in European classrooms. Any sort of reflection at all on how evil this was?
It might have gotten better recently but in the UK, while there's heavy emphasis on showing how the British were among the first to end slavery (William Wilberforce, the Slave Trade Act and sending out the West Africa Squadron etc.), very little gets said about how the slavery was legal in the first place and who benefitted from it. When I got taught about the Atlantic slave trade there was no urgency to tell you which 'europeans' would go down to Africa to trade slaves, the fact that the major slave trading ports were London, Bristol and Liverpool gets ignored (I know folks in Bristol who only learned this when the statue of Edward Colston was thrown into the harbour).
You're probably lucky if they spend any more time than that on the empire, so much of the history curriculum gets reserved for pointless lessons on medieval monarchies and wars. I got a few lessons on Ireland and home rule and a few on India and that was it for teaching about the empire. A lot of the British believing their empire was wholesome comes from how warped those mandatory history lessons are, most aren't going to keep studying history past 16 so they don't even get taught how to interpret history other than take whatever your teacher told you as hard fact.