Father Oleksa dares to speak the truth about the dirty secret of education in rural Alaska.

For 100 years, Native Alaskans went to a school where their own language was forbidden, their history and culture benignly ignored or violently demeaned, denigrated, even persecuted. Teachers were given no orientation to the language or culture of their students or the communities in which they taught. The curriculum was the same course of studies as anywhere else in the U.S. And after 8th grade, the best and brightest students were recruited to attend boarding schools hundreds, even thousands, of miles from home.

Those BIA institutions were operated, in my estimation, with controls that rival today's correctional centers. We locked up three generations of Alaska Natives for the crime of being born Native. We inferred not too subtly that their parents were incapable of raising their own children. The state had to remove them in order to civilize them and make "real Americans" of them.

Then came the famous lawsuit with Molly Hootch's name attached and the state was ordered to end the boarding school system. High schools have been built at great expense but the "success" of the students has not much improved as we hoped. This is not because Molly Hootch was a mistake. It was because the assimilationist "melting pot" philosophy of 19th century schooling has never been challenged. We are attempting in the name of "education" the same cultural genocide as the missionary-teachers of 150 years ago. Teacher orientation has hardly changed. The curriculum remains the same. The system is still focused on destroying traditional Alaska Native society, now at the local instead of the national or state level.

Ask any rural teacher when they consider their program a success and they will say when their graduates leave the village. Ask then how many actually do leave for further training at AVTEC, UA, or Job Corps, and the percentage is usually fairly low. Ask then what in their curriculum is relevant to the 80 to 90 percent of their students who have no intention or wish to leave, and they'll admit that there is nothing in the existing curriculum that would excite or interest that group. Ask then why this does not explain the high truancy and dropout rates.

This amazing editorial was written by Father Michael Oleksa who is an Orthodox priest from Anchorage that specializes in diversity training and cross-cultural communications.

The fact that this article was written by a member of the Orthodox church makes it even more amazing.

Anybody with any knowledge of the early days of Alaska, and how the native population was treated, knows that it was rife with prejudices against the indigenous people and an aggressive campaign to wipe out their heritage, destroy their language, and indoctrinate them into Christianity.

The first schools founded in Alaska were run by priests and nuns who saw the native people as inferior and who desperately required civilizing. This "civilizing" took the shape of constant reminders to speak only English in the classrooms (often reinforced by corporal punishment), changing their traditional Yupik or Athabaskan names (that the nuns simply could not pronounce) to names plucked from the Bible, and in many cases tearing the children away from their families to be raised in boarding schools in preparation to live in a world that many would never see. You can read more about that here (pdf file.)

Though these people truly believed they were doing God's work, and ultimately would save the native Alaskans from their barbarism, in fact they were engaging in the murder of an entire culture. The devastation left behind by these "godly people" is still felt by many native communities to this day.

I have personally heard innumerable stories of how children were beaten for not speaking English in the presence of the educators. How their simple religious beliefs were treated as quaint fables and then summarily dismissed by the whites who then demanded that they attend church many times a week and pray to the Christian God (in English of course). How the children were told not to listen to or respect their elders because they were simpletons who could not understand the new knowledge that the children were learning in the Catholic boarding schools. All of this and more served to fracture native communities, undermine parent/child relationships, and foster an environment where alcohol and drugs found fertile ground to take hold.

And Father Oleksa is correct in pointing out that even though the educators who go to teach in village schools today are much, much more culturally sensitive then those that came before, they are still laboring under some unfortunate assumptions which make their jobs virtually impossible.

How does one get children to want to learn a subject that will be of little if any use to their life in the villages? How can a teacher teach a child whose attendance is occasional at best? How does a teacher teach a child who thinks of them as an outsider who does not understand their culture, their language, or their history?

Until Alaska's education system is completely revamped to fit the unique needs of Alaska's rural native community it will continue to be an abject failure. I can tell you first hand that it is usually not the teacher's fault. I have met dozens of bright, energetic teachers who returned from the villages beaten down and defeated. Some even left teaching altogether, never to return.

This may be perfect challenge for our brand new Senator Mark Begich to take on. He has already started the ball rolling with a bold new plan.

Mark Begich believes the nation must invest in schools for the good of children and society. Additional support could be used by school districts to obtain high-quality curriculum materials reflecting 21st century literacy skills; information technology for all students; professional development for teachers to obtain high tech expertise; and improved salaries and focused recruitment to bring Alaska graduates back to our towns and villages as teachers.

I certainly like the sound of that plan so far. Especially the idea of teaching rural natives to return to their villages as educators. That could be the secret weapon needed to get children to stay in school, develop a love of learning, and stick it out until they receive their diplomas.

Now let us see if he has the stomach to really see these innovative ideas through.