How history should be taught and learned

“The main problem facing Ukraine is the lack of deep-rooted national realization of civic responsibility. This is the core challenge the country is to address on its own.” This is what the world’s renowned foreign policy expert Zbigniew Brzezinski emphasized in his interview to the Ukrainian newspaper Holos Ukrainy as far back as 2003. This statement was brought up quite recently, in May 2009, by Mykola Lazarovych, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History of the Ternopil University of Economics, in his open letter to Ukraine’s Minister of Education and Science Ivan Vakarchuk. He sent a copy of the letter to The Day.

Lazarovych quoted Brzezinski’s words to underline that Ukrainian society is not prepared to quit learning the history of Ukraine (even if in technical colleges). Moreover, it needs the knowledge of its own history as the key to its further existence. The author emphasizes, “One can get an impression that there are certain circles both in and outside Ukraine that are anxious for the Ukrainian people to remain ignorant about their past.”

This letter is just one of the many manifestations of the deep resentment among some Ukrainian intellectuals and brought about by the MES decision to reduce the proportion of liberal arts courses in technical colleges throughout the country.

Last week Viktor Pushkin, director of the Institute of Humanitarian Problems at the Dnipropetrovsk National Mining University and a contributor to The Day, sent us the ministerial draft order “On the Improvement of the Normative Component in the Content of Specialist Training,” which had been circulated throughout higher education institutions. In the dry paragraphs following Vakarchuk’s signature he offers interesting innovations to the college administrations. The draft does not contain the previously voiced idea of withdrawing the course in the history of Ukraine from the curricula, which had made Lazarovych so uneasy.

The joint effort of the teaching profession and mass media helped vindicate history. Scholars and public figures also stood up for it by holding press conferences and bringing out angry articles in the press. But it does imply something else: the courses of political science and sociology, which have hitherto been compulsory in any higher education institution, are to enter the list of optional (!) courses under the ministerial decision.

Instead, the sages from the MES have raised the amount of math and sciences for arts students to 48 credits (1 credit equals 36 academic hours). For some obscure reason, the Ministerial officials will not see that the arts are as important as the sciences, because only the former can help solve Ukraine’s most vital current problem, which is building a civilized, humane civic society.

Without having a profound understanding of the basics of social development, which is provided by philosophy (luckily, the Ministry has not yet targeted it), political science, sociology, “it is impossible to form HUMAN BEINGS with their views, feelings, and methods and rules of behavior. In the human-oriented world of today, an individual should feel at ease.” This is how Yaroslav Malyk, Ph.D. in History, Professor, Chair of Department of European Integration and Law at the Lviv Regional Institute of State Administration, comments on this controversial innovation.

It is worth mentioning that not all the experts whom The Day contacted flatly rejected the Ministry’s ideas. They hold it really necessary to reduce the amount of the liberal arts for science students, as well as increase the time for independent work—the way it is being done in the European countries whose practices we are so anxious to adopt. But it is really crucial to find a balance between quantity and quality, instead of just dumping the humanities due to the lack of hours for the major disciplines, or because the humanities are believed to be of minor importance by some. Besides, for the European nations, which are well past the stage of national self-realization, the humanities might indeed be of lesser importance.

But why look to Europe alone? For the sake of justice, let’s see what is going on to the east. The other day the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta published on its website an article entitled “History not to be re-written. Orthodox generals commission a uniform history textbook, all the others considered ideologically harmful.” The authors are scandalized at the textbook prepared by Russia’s Center for State Analysis and State-and-Administration Planning that considers a history class to be an instrument of state political administration.

“We should respond to de-ideologization with the formation of a new state ideology; to the destruction of continuity of generations, with substantiation of historical succession; to the denigration of the past, with creating an entire gallery of positive role models, etc.” This is a quotation from the above-mentioned textbook. In the authors’ opinion, by offhandedly prescribing the manner in which the nation’s history should be reported, this monograph is a straightforward violation of Article 13 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, which reads: “No ideology can be established as official or compulsory.”

Novaya Gazeta’s homepage (http://www.novayagazeta.ru/) cites a selection of quotes from the monograph. We are sure that they will prove interesting to our readers, and provide them below.

OURS CANNOT BE WARS OF AGGRESSION

“In dealing with Russia’s foreign policy during the reign of Empress Catherine II (textbook by A. L. Yurganov and L. A. Katsva—L. R.) the final conclusion is this: ‘However, all this success was achieved at the extravagantly high cost of the lives of thousands of Russian men and a huge waste of economic resources. One should also bear in mind the aggressive, expansionist nature of the wars waged by the Russian Empire in the late 18th century.’ The authors seem totally unaware of the notion of national interests and natural borders. Russia’s participation in the divisions of Poland is also assessed as an act of aggression against a sovereign state.”

LIBERAL REFORMS ARE NOT THE PATH FOR US

“Analyzing the textbook by P. M. Zyryanov, one cannot but notice the author’s striking liberal bias. In the description of various designs and attempts at reform made in the early reign of Alexander I (The Secret Committee and M. Speranski) and Alexander II, the author demonstrates an uncritical approach to liberal reforms as the optimum path in the nation’s development. Thus the textbook under consideration has an obvious pro-Western bias. At the same time, there had been no critical fact-based research into the degree of applicability and viability of a liberal design for Russia and in Russia’s circumstances.”

THE DECEMBRISTS PROMOTED FOREIGN IDEAS, ENCROACHED UPON STATE POWER

“The anti-government ideas of would-be Decembrists are given an overall positive evaluation as being progressive, anti-despotic, and directed against the tyranny. Meanwhile, the authors totally forget about certain crucial points. Thus, none of the textbooks highlights the foreign sources of the Decembrists’ ideas.”

FORGET THE MULTI-ETHNIC NATION

“The totally unemotional depiction of the events of World War II in all of the above-mentioned textbooks on the 20th-century history is stunning. The authors ignore the Russian people’s key role in defeating Germany. A. A. Danilov and L. G. Kosulina in their history textbook for grade 9 went as far as including a paragraph on ‘The Multi-Ethnic Soviet Nation on the Fronts of WWII’. The interpretation of events in this paragraph can help form a stereotype in students that all nations of the USSR contributed equally to the victory over Nazism.”

RUSSIANS ARE A STATE-BUILDING NATION

“A considerable proportion of textbooks on history generally tend to play down the role of the Russian people in building the Russian state. The belittling of the Russian people’s state-building role has essentially become a constant in school curricula.”

STALINIST DEPORTATIONS WERE REASONABLE

“In depicting the Stalinist deportations of nations the facts are presented in such a way as to create an impression of a senseless, arbitrary tyranny by a totalitarian state. This is accompanied by the deliberate omission of facts of massive cooperation of Chechens and the Crimean Tartars with the Nazis. This ‘preterition’ is also at work when it comes to the pro-fascist nationalist movement in Western Ukraine and the Baltic area.”

AMERICA IS TO BLAME

“The textbooks on history tend to be very biased and anti-patriotic when it comes to explaining the Soviet Union’s role in suppressing the anti-Communist movements in Hungary and Czechoslovakia in 1956 and 1968 respectively. The facts of American secret services having a role in these events are hushed up (the same is true of the preparation of East Europe’s ‘velvet revolutions’ of 1989–90), while the fact that any major world power can have its own interests in maintaining its own sphere of influence is totally neglected.”

RUINERS, NOT REFORMERS

“Special consideration should be given to the way the events of the present-day history of Russia (1992–2000) are represented in textbooks on history. The authorities’ actions are persistently qualified as ‘reforms’ though it would be more correct to label them as destruction in all the spheres of social and economic life. While depicting warfare in Chechnya, the authors tend to ignore the anti-Russian, anti-Orthodox, and Islamist nature of the Chechen terrorists.”

The facts adduced in Novaya Gazeta require separate treatment. But for us they are really significant. The difference in the state-building approaches to education in Russia and Ukraine is obvious. While the Russian authorities boost nationalistic sentiments among the young and develop a uniform (!) state policy in teaching and learning history and related disciplines, in Ukraine they want to give up learning history altogether. In Russia, history is used as a sort of ideological sledgehammer, and Moscow never misses a chance to reproach Ukraine for alleged attempts to re-write history. Under these conditions, the very idea of giving up a thorough study of historical disciplines should be regarded as a deliberate crime against the nation.

The Day has talked to a vice president of one of the top Ukrainian universities who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of “harming himself or his institution,” (He said he had had a “painful experience of how rancorous the present Ministry be.”) He said that he has an impression as if the prime mover of these innovations in education had given clear-cut orders to destroy the whole system of education in Ukraine. He also added that the principle underlying the work of the MES officials (who are so ardently “adopting the European practice”) reminded him of another department, where they similarly enjoy monkey business.

COMMENTSRIES

Ihor LUTSIV, Ph.D. in Technical Sciences, Professor, First Vice President, Ivan Puliui Ternopil State Technical University:

“History should be learned in school. Its curriculum is basically similar to the university one. I’m not speaking about liberal arts institutions. There you study history on a totally different level, but in our case we somewhat ‘repeat’ the course. Apart from history, there are other disciplines where we go over the school curriculum again. As a vice president of a technical university, I can say that a lot of my colleagues are quite skeptical about the considerable liberal arts component in the curricula of technical higher education institutions. We often raised the issue of teaching history with the Ministry of Education and Science and various methodology commissions in that we’re about to switch to a two-tier system (Bachelor – Master), and the first of these two degrees has got a limited number of credits, from 180 to 240. That is, it costs the state more, because it pays for the liberal arts component of the curriculum. This subject, the history of Ukraine, is taken on quite a serious basis at school, and then you do it again at a technical university. If we spoke about, say, taking the history of Ukrainian science or the history of technology (this subject exists), these are the disciplines that a prospective engineer really needs to learn. If we speak about economists, they have a special course in the history of economic thought. That is to say, there are indeed specialized historical disciplines. The Ministry has finally ventured to reduce the liberal arts component a bit and give more hours to teach specialized disciplines. It goes without saying that every Ukrainian should know the history of Ukraine. But if you look at this problem from a different angle, you’ll see that being quite a young state, Ukraine needs history as a subject that performs a cultural, civilizational role. That is why it is perhaps too early to give it up at this stage.”

Petro TADEIEV, First Vice President, Stepan Demianchuk International University of Economics and Humanities, Rivne:

“The question of teaching certain disciplines at universities also needs to be revised. For instance, there is this course in the history of Ukraine in higher education institutions. It essentially repeats the material covered by the school curriculum. That’s it would be worthwhile to introduce an innovation when students could choose from a range of disciplines in the cultural studies.”

Mykola ADAMOVSKY, First Vice President, Lviv National Forestry University:

“We’re facing a challenge now, which is to make sure that our new B.S. holders can go and work as engineers. That is why the liberal arts in the curriculum should be reduced indeed to free space for more vocational training. Otherwise we won’t be able to fill the academic course with job-oriented disciplines and get enough credits for vocational training. For the time being we left everything as it is at our university and didn’t lay off anyone, since there has been no order from the Ministry. The history of Ukraine, sociology, and political science are still in the curriculum. We have only reduced—to a reasonable degree, by 20 percent—the amount of hours for these disciplines. We have looked at the current situation at other similar schools (in Finland, Italy, Slovenia, Sweden, and Germany), and this seems to be common practice. Our Ukrainian specialists do have low qualifications. This is probably due to objective factors, such as insufficient vocational training for students and stagnation in the industry... We’re working to fix this situation. Certain courses can be included in the Masters’ curriculum. We also might introduce ecological ethics and other electives. We’re considering this. Still, ensuring high-quality training for our B.S. holders, prospective engineers, means reducing the humanities in the curriculum. It’s important that liberal arts specialists put their heads together and decide on the amount of credits for these subjects and also work on standard syllabi as we still haven’t got these for the humanities.”

Petro PYLOV, First Vice President, National Mining University, Dnipropetrovsk:

“The quality of education is basically determined by secondary school. It is at this stage that all the attention should be directed. In my experience, the school level of training in physics, for instance, is rather unsatisfactory. The exam in this subject has been canceled, and then, there are no qualified teachers. Schooling in general should be well-balanced; it ought to be comprehensive secondary education, which can then be further developed and improved. History, alongside with other humanities, should be given a priority. At least this is what we have at our university.”

Valerii MALAKHOV, President, Odessa National Polytechnic University:

“The reduction of the humanities in the curricula of technical colleges is caused by certain objective reasons. Prior to that, subjects other than those directly pertaining to the student’s major used to take up a quarter of the total amount of hours. I would call it plenty, because our primary task is to train specialists in the technical field. The reduction of the humanities by up to 10 per cent is relevant to the goals of higher technical education. The reduction in hours has to be made up for by the improvement in the content of training. The main question is the quality of the training a student gets. Anyway, the formation of a generation of citizens and patriots is unrelated to the number of hours given to teaching history in polytechnics. It is a complex and subtle process involving educational, informational, and a whole lot of other processes. These processes must be initiated by both the state and society.”

Anatolii PRYKHODKO, Vice President, Prydniprovska State Academy for Construction and Architecture, Dnipropetrovsk:

“If we are to adapt our system of education to the Western standards, it should be mentioned that in polytechnics of the EU countries the humanities are not taught at all. At least I didn’t see that in Germany, France, or Belgium. The approach there is quite simple and easy: if you want to expand your horizons, you’re welcome, but the humanities are not on the list of core subjects. Conversely, in this country in technical colleges and polytechnics they comprise up to one third of the subjects in the curriculum. Oftentimes we are even faced with the situation when we don’t have any room for the disciplines that are absolutely necessary for our students’ career goals. “Generally speaking, there are loads of cryptic subjects in our curricula, such as Ukrainian Studies, taught by the former Departments of the History of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) and introduced in the early 1990s, when Ukraine gained its independence. It goes without saying that our students should be able to learn more about the country they live in. In my opinion, it’s well worth leaving the history of Ukraine in the curricula of technical colleges and universities, but on the whole the hours for the humanities should be cut down.”

Viktor PUSHKIN, Director, Institute of Humanitarian Problems, Dnipropetrovsk National Mining University:

“Clearly, the Ministry tends to throw out the humanities from the university curricula, above all in technical, medical, and agrarian colleges and universities. The amount of hours for the humanities is reduced to a minimum—it doesn’t exceed 54 hours but in fact it’s 37. Ukrainian takes up as much as 17 hours. At the same time physical training is also listed as one of the humanities, thus making the total number of hours look quite acceptable. This year we have seen an attempt to do away with the history of Ukraine at our universities, swapping it for the history of Ukrainian culture (which would doubtlessly prove useful for the young, but not at the expense of the history of Ukraine). It is only through joint efforts that we were able to vindicate the history of Ukraine [as a subject]. The recent Ministerial order excludes political science and sociology from the list of core subjects. These are very important, vital disciplines that have immediate bearing on the formation of the political culture of the youth and the future Ukrainian elite. It was by no mere chance that they became part and parcel of the university curricula after Ukraine gained its independence. They had been totally ignored by the previous regime. Since then we have trained specialists in sociology and political science by the most up-to-date standards. Specialized departments have been created at universities. Students enjoy these disciplines. But suddenly it turns out that our society, or rather the power elite, does not need people who are able to think critically and analytically, people with a broad outlook. I am sure that this approach to the problems of student education does not meet the national interests of Ukraine and is essentially destructive, which is, after all, characteristic of the Ministry’s numerous other ‘reforms.”