Learning history is an investment in the future

Frontiersman editorial board

The Legislature is once again considering a bill that would require high school students to pass an Alaska history class to earn a diploma. We throw our full support behind this plan.

Sometimes classes are designed to get students excited about a topic, to inspire them to learn more. Others offer basic, day-to-day knowledge students will need after they graduate. Instruction in Alaska's history addresses both of these.

A good class, taught by the right teacher, could help students to understand the relevance of years gone by, to observe in their own communities the effects of those years and, in turn, could inspire them to enjoy history as a general subject.

But more importantly, information about how we all arrived in Alaska and how we formed our government and established our relationships with each other and with the rest of the world is critical to decisions we make everyday. Whether it is the ongoing debate over subsistence and its related struggle of rural versus urban communities or the issue of where state money comes from and how it is spent, we could all stand to take a look back over the decades prior to today.

So far, dozens of legislators around the state have signed on as co-sponsors of the Alaska history requirement bill, joining forces with sponsor Rep. Mary Kapsner,

D-Juneau.

Lt. Gov. Fran Ulmer, the state Tolerance Commission and the Anchorage School Board have all voiced their support of the bill.

We encourage our legislators and local school board to take a similar stance. This is a chance to not only help our students be better educated about their own state, but also to possibly improve everything from race relations to budget decisions in years to come as these students become the business and government leaders of Alaska.

But all this grand talk of looking back at our history to improve our future won't mean a thing if we don't have the money to make it happen.

Too often federal and state laws pile new requirements onto our educators but then don't back it up with adequate budget increases. We don't want to see everyone cheer for the Alaska history class requirement, only to have have it come back to our local schools as yet another unfunded mandate.

Look at it as an investment. The better educated today's youth are about the Alaska's history, the better equipped they will be in the future to make decisions that will become a part of Alaska's history. And every student who becomes more interested in Alaska history and government is one more person who will become an interested voter, an involved citizen and, possibly, a dedicated legislator.