By ALEXANDER DOLITSKY
Today, our primary and secondary schools, and society at large, should be discussing essential social concepts that provide a background, foundation, and historic context of the cultural and traditional landscape in our country, instead of advocating for divisive “Critical Race Theory,” “systemic racism,” “DEI,” and “gender identity” nonsense.
In this essay, I would like to address three imperative concepts as a guideline for common-sense educators: appreciation of history; interpretation of truth and fact; and understanding of the criterion of beauty and its social application.
APPRECIATION OF HISTORY
Many students of history ask an essential question: “What is a practical application of history?” Unfortunately, there is no simple answer because history is not just a recording of facts and events; nor is it merely a logical classification of data in chronological order. History is the development and evolution of mankind from the past through present and to future. History forms a picture of what has happened to mankind from its origins to the present moment.
History is functional in as much as it allows us to understand our relationship with the past and to other societies and cultures. History reveals a pattern of a nation’s emergence and growth. It gives us facts and allows us to search for underlying causes of historic events. It is also poetic, in the sense that we all have an inborn curiosity and sense of wonder about the past.
But what do the politics of the past matter to modern men and women in the 21st century? What relevance has Tsar Nicholas II, Woodrow Wilson, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin or Winston Churchill to modern concerns? Nowadays it is fashionable in many circles to deny that there is any intrinsic value in historical study. Yet, whenever statesmen, administrators, educators, politicians or journalists wish to convince the public of the rightness of their actions, they appeal to history. It is important, therefore, how history is written and who writes it. We need reliable and accurate guides to the past.
The past could be viewed as a foreign country or different culture. The attitudes and behavior of historical figures are often alien to the present generation. On the other hand, we should remember that the past was also populated with foreigners—in the sense that most people lived in closely-knit national, regional or even tribal communities—with access to much less information about events and conditions elsewhere in the globe than we have today. To these people, the world outside their communities often looked exotic and strange.
At one level, this distance from foreigners could give a romantic zeal for exploration; at another, it could encourage xenophobic resentment and murderous hatred.
The 20th century saw the occupants of the planet Earth come to know more about each other than ever before. But it also witnessed genocide, holocaust and mass destructions. It is important, therefore, that we understand how these two contradictory developments came about in the historic context.
The crucial distinction is not the difference between fact and fiction, but the distinction between fact and truth. Fact can exist without human intelligence or interference (e.g., gravity, speed of light, or other natural laws of physics), but truth cannot; truth is a man-made narrative.
I don’t think truth exists in any significant or objective way. Reality is not about truth, but about the relationship of facts to one another. Indeed, modern journalists should rely and base their observations and reporting on facts, not on an abstract and often fabricated “truth” and manipulation of data, as it is extensively evident in the far-left and fake journalism in our country today—i.e., CNN, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS broadcasting systems and our own progressive and convoluted Juneau Empire newspaper in Alaska under leadership of Mark Sabbatini.
The concept and criterion of beauty is subjective to every individual—for some, blue is beautiful, for others green. I enjoy classical music; heavy metal gives me a headache. This is why in America we exercise a freedom of individual choice and individual appreciation of beauty. Indeed, beauty is not a group phenomenon. Thus, for example, no government policy can make me prefer green to blue.
The world may be beautiful, or it may be dismal to us. It depends on the view we take or the way we look at things. We may see beauty in everything. We may see beauty in a truckload of wood that is just being unloaded at our door. Others may just see a dirty load of logs—lacking in beauty. But on the other side, it makes our house warm and cozy, and we appreciate this source of beauty, even in the truckload of wood.
In short, the appreciation of beauty is the ability to see the good and beautiful in the objects which on the surface may not appear attractive. It is important, therefore, that we cultivate this ability to see in other people qualities buried beneath the surface of what we may think is an “unattractive individual.” Beauty is present in every color, race, physical shape, and nationality.
Indeed, the most common purpose of education is to gain knowledge and skills that will prepare individuals to lead productive and fulfilling lives; and, certainly, not to indoctrinate and brainwash our youth in the far-left ideology intended to support corrupt politicians who enrich themselves secretly outside the rule of law through kickbacks, bribes, and special favors from lobbyists and corporations; or they simply direct public funds to themselves and their associates—as it has been recently revealed by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Alexander B. Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine, in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and was enroled in the Ph.D. program in Anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also a lecturer in the Russian Center. In the U.S.S.R., he was a social studies teacher for three years, and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukranian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He lived first in Sitka in 1985 and then settled in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was a U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education from 1988 to 2006; and has been the Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center (see www.aksrc.homestead.com) from 1990 to present. He has conducted about 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky has been a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, and Clipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. He was the Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. He has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology, and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka; Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia; Old Russia in Modern America: Russian Old Believers in Alaska; Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During WWII; Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East; Living Wisdom of the Far North: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska; Pipeline to Russia; The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in WWII; and Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers; Ancient Tales of Chukotka, and Ancient Tales of Kamchatka.
Nonsense, they’re too busy striking for more money…..
I agree, Alexander. The left-wing commie, revisionist History professors are a plague on the education system. This is the brainwashing department. So glad to see many of them getting flushed into the soil.
And a few of the ugly ones are pushing up weeds.
Hope Dunleavy doesn’t sign the bill on his desk to give more money to the Brick and Morter Schools instead of having the homeschool system boosted! Parents are the teachers of their children, and it should end there. Throwing more money at the schools will not solve their incompetence!
Education must return to teaching! Educators need to go away and let teachers do what they do best and teach. Parents need to support the teachers and not the education system. Who works every day in a classroom more? Administrators? NO! Teachers are there every day for a child to help them learn and improve. Educators show up and cram their biases into the kids minds on broken curriculum and cry for more pay!
Like I always said, “be a teacher, not an educator”!
Very appreciative for this article, written by an author with an actual functional background in education, bringing up this most essential issue of the current day for our national society, just using the 2 key words in the title “Appreciation and History” target the core problems.
In general, our American society is both unappreciative and ignorant of history. It’s not even called history, rather social studies.
All narratives used to destroy and influence public discourse and logical thinking commence by changing the terms. It is neither accurate or by accident that the term history was abandoned.
Written history is ancient in the western and eastern worlds. The recording of events and accumulation of knowkedge are passed on, and added to. Our Iñupiat ancestors didn’t write but recorded history in memorized stories, that were retold to the extended families regularly. For this reason the language was ridiculed and forced speakers to not use, and then lose it. Erasing the traditional storage and transmission of history erases a culture, to standardize the narratives of ignorance and manipulation to brainwash the public as a whole.
The cultural breakdown in rural villages and loss of what was absolute authority of the elders have proven disastrous. The most pleasant communities of 40/50 years ago have become micro urban ghettos.
Our once proud cities in the US and western Europe are filthy and dangerous. We blame incompetent and corrupt managers and politicians, but they simply reflect the decrepit state of we, the public.
Mastering an education was termed disciplines, again a term dismissed, as intellectual and physical laziness is key to dumbing down a population into accepting exploitation. Students are no longer encouraged to argue, they are told what to think and ignore obvious falsehoods. Even disciplined for not following the narratives.
The Democrat Party was weaponized and took the lead in destroying education and the introduction of toxic ideologies listed in the article above. Also destroying universities and creating systems of ignorant and fanatical “teachers” protected by all powerful unions. While enriching unions by absorbing the resources needed for the youth, the youth is defrauded again by indoctrination in ignorant narratives.
The Republicans feign objections, but it is empty rhetoric. Republicans never avoid to fail in reversing the damages done by Democrats when they are in brief cycles of control of the government. They are simply the junior partners of their Democrat mentors. Outlier Republicans are isolated and ridiculed. Simply annoyances to what is a Uniparty.
Comparing the eloquence in wording and the ability to formulate the concepts in drafting the Constitution by individuals schooled in the 1740/50s backwater North American colonies to a vested university professor unable to regurgitate one sound precept today, illustrates the degradation perfectly.
Brian, thank you for sharing your thoughts above.
Pertaining to your thoughts on degradation of education, I offer the following: A law professor gives his first year students an assignment. They are to read select Federalist Papers. Following that assignment, the students complain, ” these Papers were very hard to comprehend!”. The law professor hesitated, ” I’m sorry, those Papers were not written for College Graduates to comprehend, they were written for their audience, 18th century farmers”.
The professor’s comments perfectly illustrate the erosion of centuries of accumulated knowledge and cognitive thinking in our country.
Excellent quote.
I appreciate the thoughts of Alexander and Brian. History is written to reinforce patriotism. Factual history is about triumphs and tragedies. My history book ignored slavery, Jim Crow laws maintained by lynchings, and the mass displacement and degradation of Native Americans. All societies have a true history. And hopefully we have on from the mentality of White Man’s Burden.
Today, many radical schoolteachers believe themselves to be teaching the “truthful” history of the world, including American History. They aggressively and unwisely inject divisive concepts of “gender identity,” “Project 1619,” and “white privilege,” and “critical race” doctrines into their teaching curriculums. This neo-Marxist type of teaching will accomplish two main objectives: (1) racial segregation among our youth, and (2) hatred of the historic past of our nation. It is imperative to acknowledge and understand, in contrast, that world events must be interpreted and understood in the historic context of their time, relying on facts rather than on subjective “truth” wrapped into neo-Marxist ideology.
Thank you for this article. I wonder if it’s too late to stop this aggressive takeover of our education system by the radical leftists. Each new generation of teachers coming out of our universities is more and more removed from a truly classical education not tainted by radical political ideology. And their students will be even further removed. How do we turn this around?
Alex,
I question the purpose of defining the manufactured precepts that infest those who feign to be our intellectual class, such as “gender identity,” “Project 1619,” and “white privilege,” and “critical race” as Marxist ideology.
Communism was to be a state of societal achievement, the apex of a socialist revolution, overturning the morbid class system of Europe for the powerless and impoverished masses.
As the Russian Empire’s nobility, royalty and merchant classes were the first to succumb to a socialist revolution, and it’s not clear to me that Soviet leaders ever declared that a truly communist state was ever achieved.
Russian society has always and remains socially conservative. The Soviets would have not comprehended the current American and European twisted and effiminate nonesense, much less promoted such garbage.
Is what we are seeing the preliminary Marxist tactic of undermining a society, to soften it up? A pre revolutionary step in the long process of “achieving” a communist state and society? We know a key factor is obedience to God must be removed to make way for obedience to the state.
And family authority and cohesion must be broken into rudderless individuals, who become dependent on the state.
It’s just difficult to comprehend this incomprehensible babble promoted currently with reference to historic Marxism.
Brian, there are several critical questions or issues in your comment. I don’t have a simple answer(s) or explanation. A young scholar can write a dissertation on these subjects. But we passed this stage of engagement in our life. Cheers!!
Good point “Interpreted and understood in the historic context of their time.” Movies often portray history to please the masses. Birth of a Nation DW Griffith 1915 and Errol Flynn in They Died with their Boots On 1941. How much does culture (family or media bread prejudice) play a role in our beliefs? I would venture TikTok has more influence than our classrooms. Many parents are absent in their children’s lives and the void is filled with the I phone and trying to make friends. The values of the friends dictate your actions. Youth membership in religious institutions is at an all time low. Appreciate your thoughts.
Thank you again for the simple truth to set a wholesome foundation in education.
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