Polynesian. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu], Hawaii) 1844-1864, 1861-07-27
No. Is.

/
the kalo patch, the rough lava of the potato h are
not compatible with hands used only to the slate and
pencil the scissors and needle while the sound of the
kappa FOUNDER is only barbarous accompaniment to the
| flute and meodon No the study of the English
language does not with the mass of Hawaiian learners
rise to the rank Of q bread study" The sun
burnt caous-handed father, who does all the working
that the may do all the studying, has an element
of manhood within him which never comes to Ha-
waiians by study alone 1t is greatly be feared that
this of workers is fast dying out-hat the little Ha
wsan hives to be divided between the queen bees
and the drones What the remedy for this dangerous
tendency The English language says, 1t is not in
me- 0) So far from it, there is painful probability,
that when want real and artificial stares them in the
| face, our denationalzed Hawaiian daughters will be
bought up with foreign gold (11) denationaized
Hawaiian will fall back upon the popular and over
stocked profession of vagabond This no fancy SKETCH
written only in the croaking mode and future ense-t
is true copy" Of picture drawn in colors Of tears
and blood, and hung up In highways and byways, for
every day inspection.
But some may think then the English course can be
shortened and thus avoid the evils thus referred to-
The fact is the course is usually both shortened and in
ermittent-long enough to occupy the time which would
have given the learner respectable knowledge Of read
ing, writing, geography and arithmetic in his own yer
nacular, but by means long enough to enrich him
with this knowledge through the medium of q difficult
foreign tongue The result therefore is in many cases,
ignorance Of native literature, undgnied protess
foreign argon united perhaps with the ability Of making
|
| the ladies.
1t is doubtless much easier to show what viii not
bless and the Hawaiian than to suggest plan
that WR But il is safe to say that industry-native
born, Hawaiian indIstries-n every department should
be made popular. encouraged paronized. Every temp
taton to shirk it, every effort to thrust foreign learning
into its place will prove miserable failure Atbest it
will only feed the brain at the expense Of the body
nation live without the English language, without
q military, without palaces and war ships, but never
without the red blood the bone and snew which begets
industry, and which is begotten by it. And this is
matter which every friend of Hawaii together with its
Government and its Board of Education, must carefully
| look to.
Notwithstanding all that has been said, and all that
might be but has been sid against the popular vote
for English. all proud to know that there are
few Hawaiians who read, speak, and write the English
language with power and beauty. But to arrive at this
degree Of perfection, required the continuous labor and
instruction of years, and a combination of favorable
circumstances which cannot occur again.
Can do better then, than to expend cur labors IN
English teaching upon those, first, who can afford to
spend half life time in study, and who need an exact
knowledge Of the language for very important practical
purposes and, secondly, upon those who discover
peculiar facility in acquiring language, united to gen.
uine, selforiginated impulse towards wider than
mere Hawaiian culture. This will provide for all the
exceptional cases. and for the must believe what
we often repeat that nations have infancy well
as individuals C2). We believe, partly at least. in in
dvidual childhood for reaches maturity under
those teachers parents who wise enough to keep
hands off, in the right place, and allow the growth
and change to go on after Gods fashion. The "God-
dess Hurry is invoked. to do up the work Of twenty
years in ten.
And of the childhood of races civilization is still more
intolerant o. those numberless tenuous, concentric
layersdeiberately wrapped around the national tree
one ten, one hundred, one thousand At this rate,
we to die before work is completed, unless
some short hand method of cvlizing be invented.
Accordingly is invented composed Of nearly equal
parts of commerce. disease, foreign capital, unscrupu
lous TALENT education, and little Christianity if any
one is strenuous that point. Should nation die out
under this new method, you are cooly told, 1t be-
longs to the races which cannot bear civilization
In every child growing to maturity in our sight, God
enacting the history of nation as if for our special
instruction in the art Of cvilzing infant races. Many
passages in these respective histories are nearly para
lel and none more nearly than at the outset when
it is easy to discern between the phenomena refsrabe
respectively to education and religion nation, like
child, accept Gods law rule Of action, soon
is presented and fully Il is understood. In
this sense a nation can be born in day. This being
done, each may, yea each must, bide its time for
heathful development of mental power and material
strength which can safely only they come in
harmony with Gods established laws. Observing this
natural order in national well individual develop
Ament philanthropss would be spared the trouble Of
bringing the wild Indian into the Christian fold the
nd Of the lasso and of introducing the African chat
3e to Christianity through the horrors of the middle
wish for mythic Deucalion who should pick up these
Hawaiian bricks in detail, and, by throwing them
over his shoulder convert them into full grown men,
with English tongues to boot.
| know it is believed by many that the Hawaiian
mind would undergo sudden expansion if introduced
to English literature, while there are others, careful
observers too who believe that the mental activity Of
the nation has already outstrpped its material prosper
ty.
1t is objected to the Hawaiian language that it con-
tans few generic terms, and few words for the express
ion of abstract IDEAS deeper underlying truth with
which must first gratple is, there ideas for
these missing words Hawaiian language is perfect
measure and exponent Of Hawaiian ideas, capable Of
being changed and expanded with every felt necessity
The human skin more surely enlarges to accommO-
date the growing body than does human language ex-
pand in obedience to the growth of IDEAS The English
language is richer and more copOus than the Hawaiian
by precisely the difference between the English and Ha-
waian mind while it is true here everywhere, that
the vernacuar tongue Of any people adequate to its
current mental wants The language Of ancient Greece
may be copious and perfect than that OF any mod
nation, but it remains dead language for all that.
Even the first classical scholars do not find that it s to
them the best medium for their own thought. and so
they give it the 60 by" when thinking and speaking
| in their own proper characters.
But nation language is not only the true
of its mind-it is the nation ITSELF in such that
annihate the one is to take the risk Of snnhisng
the other l3) 1t is painful TO see how few mourners
there at the burial OF unwritten languages how
csrelessly civilization wipes their unread cipher,
big with human experiences, if rddng the earth Of
rubbish not worth preserving True they may not be
able to enrich the vocabuaries Of advanced nations,
though of this cannot be quite But in solving
the great humanity problem, Ia IL enlightened nations
only that Of any account: Is not the most barbar
race with its barbsrous exponent to be considered
one of the terms And when the intricate equation s
being reduced ia it the true thing wet the finger and
proceed mechanically to eliminate the unknown quant
ties by cOolly rubbing them out Suppose it were cur
renty reported that the Chmpanzees Of Africa, in sc-
cordance with the programme filed out for them BY
their progressed brethren, had suddenly taken
human speech. Would not every ethnolOgst in Christ
L ho ofa krnu