Education

From the start of the first permanent settlement on Kodiak, schools were an important part of the Russian-American colony. Always faced with a labor shortage, especially skilled workers, Russians recognized the value of educating the colony's youth, be they Russian, Creole, or Native.  The first schools focused on basic skills of reading and writing in Russian, mathematics, and religion for Natives. The teachers were either Russian Orthodox priests or Russian-American Company employees. In time, education became more specialized, offering training in trades such as navigation, carpentry, blacksmithing, and joinery. As early as 1792, there were locally educated navigators working for the Shelikhov company. 

Like in most things during the colony's later years, Sitka would become the focus of education. There, Creole and Russian boys studied the skills to become shipwrights, Tlingit interpreters, barrel-makers, carpenters, cooks, furriers, and tailors. A few trained to become apothecaries, clerks, machinists, navigators, portrait painters, and scribes. All were instructed in the Russian Orthodox faith. 

A girls' school for daughters of company employees and female orphans was organized at Sitka in 1839. The school's goal was to train girls to be servants or suitable wives for company workers. Besides religious instruction, Russian, and arithmetic, girls did not take the same subjects as boys. The girls learned how to clean, cook, do handicrafts, and sew.

Some Creoles went to Russia to study, with the Russian-American Company paying for their expenses. Most attended the naval technical school at Kronstadt on Russia's Baltic seacoast and studied navigation. At the end of their studies, they were obligated to work for the company for at least ten years.

Alaska students sent to Russia sometimes had difficulty adjusting to being so far away from home and in a strange land. To remedy this, the company established the General College of the Russian Colony at Sitka in 1859. It was to provide advanced technical education to students who had previously been sent to Russia.

Students studied at the college for five years in a curriculum of classical and modern languages, mathematics, and various branches of science, with additional classes in fields of specialty, such as navigation and accounting. Each year, they took examinations to determine if they could stay in school.  During their studies, students were supported by the company. After graduation, they were required to work for the company for 10 to 15 years.

While advanced educational opportunities such as these were limited to Sitka, Russian missionaries operated schools at several locations around the colony, teaching simple arithmetic, literacy, and religion.

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