The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1883-02-24
Hawaiian Education.

Hawaiian Education.
This country can boast of less proper
tionate illiteracy h a any other country in
the world. The schoolmaster has been
everywhere about here. There is seldom
to be found an adult Hawaiian under forty
years of age who cannot read and write.
There is here an elaborate system of book
education which has been zealously carried
out under a Board of Education.
The Premier in the Legislature of 1850,
took some pains to praise the work of this
Board, as in contrast with that of the then
Board OF Health. Hawaiian textbook edu-
cation has been well carried out, but are its
results entirely satisfactory, and have they
been productive of the most beneficial
results to the country E? We know that one
gentleman, experienced in educational mat
tiers, the son of a missionary father whose
opinion we respect. remarked, some time
ago, hat one of our most prominent educa-
tional Institutions was turning out nothing
but educated scamps, or words to that
effect.
We have, amongst our Ha waiian youths
many eager and intelligent readers of such
books as have been printed in their own
language land, we are happy to add net a
few who can ,and do read English works.)
There are some who have some aptitude
for mathematics; some who are familiar
with the geography of the world, and a
very large number-eomparitively speak
ing-who write a very good hand, the Ha-
waiian taking to caligraphy naturally as it
were. With all this there are too many
instances in which the youths of his ma
ton are idlers. This can hardly DO called
entirely their fault for we know that the
Hawaiian can be trained to systematic
work. The works of their fo%refathers in
this land, executed for the most part to
assist then in procuring the ways and
means of subsistence, were, we know car
ried out under the absolute win of their
arbitrary chiefs al least, this was an i'm
portant factor in producing such industrial
| results-and the Hawaiian nature has not
changed, but if now guided by law and
superior intelligence, would produce the
same results. So far, our boosted system
| of education has not, as a whole, tended to
make manual labor honorable among
the Hawaiians. Rather. the effect has been
to impress their minds with the mistaken
idea that to drive the jack-plane, blow the
| bellows of the forge, or, in short, to follow
any mechanical occupation, was not so
honorable asto fill some clerical position, or
| be known as al advocate. There are in
stances, to be sure, where in some of our
| schools manual labor has been enforced,
and in these instances carpenters, tailors,
~compositors, telegraph operators and other
| useful mechanics now at work on these
Islauds nave received their first lessons in
the arts they practice; but, as a rule. the
| system of education heretofore carried on
! has not given that prominence to manual
labor that its importance demands. Owing
to examples set them, of avoiding honor
able labor, industrial occupations have
seemed to the Hawaiians to have a
stigma attached to them, and, in In
stances where girls in female schools
nave been required 70 undertake some
| little domestic work as a matter of training,
their parents nave Indignantly objected,
and insisted that their daughters should be
brought up with books in their hands and
not a broom. Such girls are hardly fitted
to be the wives of men who must labor with
their hands for a living. In some few in
stances where industrial training has been
attempted and properly carried out,some ex-
cellent results nave followed. We have
seen Hawaiian girls taught to prepare ap-
petizing food as adapted to the modern taste
| of people, and we feel assured from such in
stances, that, if all young Hawaiian females
under instruction should be trained to do
domestic work as we'll as enthusiastically
taught, the race would be speedily lifted up
| out of a slough of listlessiIess and iaziness
in ill-kept households. This is ono of the
sad evils of the country, which the late able
Board of Education have failed to remedy,
and it is one, too, that the present Board
we are sure will endeavor to correct. In
dustrial education, we do not doubt. will be
the keynote of their action.