Nicole Fennimore
Galena

Essay Topic: How can our schools move students towards civic responsibility, i.e., becoming voters, increasing awareness of local, state, and national governments and political issues, and understanding the relationship of our history to current situations? 

The development of civic responsibility of Alaska’s high school students is crucial to the future of our great state. Being a student myself, I believe that the one thing that Alaska schools can do better to advance our awareness of local, state, and national governments and political issues is to give us hands-on learning experience. Additionally, our students need to realize the importance that our history has to our current and future situations. Our schools can help progress this knowledge by relating historic events to real life situations.

I live in a small town of about 600 citizens and go to school with 150 students. Truthfully, at this point in my life, I do not know much about my civic responsibilities. This is because I have never had the opportunity to visit local or state government headquarters and visualize how the system works.. However, I feel that my lack of civic experience gives me an advantage. I can see what Alaska schools, specifically rural Alaska schools, need to do differently to increase political interest in students. We need more real-life class-time. We need to see how the material affects our lives and the lives of others. For example, when I am sitting in government class and my teacher is talking about Governor Sean Parnell and his office members pushing a new bill, I could care less. As I look around the classroom, students are falling asleep, texting, or gazing off into space. I think that every class should have a trip at the end of the school year to a place where they can see the material they are learning in action. For example, my government class could visit the governor’s office in Juneau, and the art class could visit an art gallery in Fairbanks. I understand that many Alaska schools do not have the money for these kinds of trips, but there are other options. Classes could hold teleconferences and videoconferences with people such as the governor or a well-known artist. The bottom line is this: students should not have to sit in a classroom all day long. Our brains are pro-active, we need to visualize how things work. If our schools want to increase civic awareness, engulfing the students in hands-on activities is critical.

Another issue that is facing Alaskan students is the broken chain of knowledge between our history and today’s events. Students are unable to connect our past to current and future situations. To most students, history is just a boring subject that is required in high school. The majority of students could care less about historic happenings such as the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. (ANCSA) However, these incidents are vital to our future. If it were not for the ANCSA, my family would not have a place to subsistence salmon fish in the summer and moose hunt in the fall. Our winter food supplies would be greatly depleted, and we would be forced to purchase costly and unhealthy store-bought food. These are the occurrences that need to be brought up in Alaska’s schools. I am sure that hundreds of students would care more about ANCSA if they knew about the circumstances that their family would be in without it. Teachers and administrators cannot make students learn information that they are not interested in. But, if they relate historic events to each and every student’s personal lives, curiosity may increase. For example, in World History, I am currently learning about Genghis Khan. At first, I really did not care about the areas and peoples he conquered. However, my grandfather informed me that my family has a very distant relation to Khan, and after that, I was very intrigued with the subject. Even the tiniest connection to real-life can grasp the attention of our students. I believe that understanding the importance of our history to current affairs is as simple as making one reference to a student’s life.

Increasing students’ enthusiasm towards civic responsibilities such as becoming voters, increasing awareness of local, state, and national governments, and political issues is a key component in Alaska’s future. Our schools need to offer more hands-on learning tools, such as field trips and teleconferences. Additionally, it is also important that our students understand the relationship between past events and current concerns. Schools can do this by simply relating the material being taught to the students’ life. Alaska has a bright future, and by performing these simple tasks, our schools will raise a culturally and politically rich generation of leaders.