The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1891-07-02

they would realize the necessity for
some kind of training in addition to what
they now have.
For number of years past between
twenty-five and thirty girls and boys from
Koloa have been away to the boarding
schools at Hilo, Makawao and Honolulu,
most of them coming home for the vaca-
tons and often bringing other school
mates with them. At the social enter
tainments of the Christian Endeavor
Society which they have attended, it has
been noticeable how much more rough
and excited these boarding school schol-
ars are when playing games than the
other native children who are accustomed
to playing with each other.
The ease and rapidity with which the
average Hawaiian has adopted the dress
and some of the customs of civilized life,
together with their natural kindness of
disposition, has led most of us to infer
that they are equally civilized in other
respects, and we are constantly doing
them injustice by demanding of them
qualities which they have had little
chance to develop.
They make bright scholars and good
mechanics, but it is in the proprieties
and common decencies of social life that
the Hawaiian is most uncivilized. How
uncivilized can only be realized by those
who know them intimately in their family
life, and hear the outrageously indecent
talk which the elders indulge in before
the children, some of the best educated
families being no exception.
Even the young men who have been
in boarding schools ten years or more,
| will make the most indelicate remarks to
| white ladies, with the bland innocence
of child, or heather.
What modesty or morality can be ex-
pected of people when the men think
nothing of being half naked, or worse,
when at work at home, or sitting in the
| house after work hours?
And when they go fishing at the sea
| shore, men, women and children, if on
a warm day, will all be nearly as desti-
tnte of clothing as their ancestors were
before the missionaries came. Boarding
| school boys are among the number.
The question is, how can these young
HaWaiians be taught common decency
as we know it? AS for family govern
ment, what obedience or respect will a
child render its mother if it sees the
| father strike or kick her whenever he
/ a
| Hawaiian woman rarely strikes back
with which she tells him her opinion of
| him for so doing, does not tend to in
crease the child's respect for either par
ent, and excepting the ministers fami-
| lies there are few homes where that does
not more or less frequently occur (and
this is one reason that so many of the
young women prefer to marry Cinnamon,
| or even not marry at alD.
Inquiry among native men and women
of different social grades, concerning
their views on the subject, will show
that all agree that the husband has a
right to infict SUITABLE corporal punish
ment C'hoopai kupono'') on his wife if
| she is disobedient (''hookuli"). Many
| of the young men who are now in board
| ing schools argue most strenuously aud
! with the utmost sincerity in favor of
wife beating as the proper and only
means of maintaining family govern
ment, adding alphabetically, because,
you know, native women not like white
women, they don't know much, and they
| are very saucy."
The fact that q Hawaiian woman
| thinks her husband has right to beat
| her, as he considers her his property
| (though of course she doesn't like it)
! brings us to the root of the matter, the
| Hawaiian woman's lack of self-respect
| Women get what they claim. If they
have self-respect enough to demand re-
| spect from men, they get it.
But Hawaiian women have not yet
learned to claim what belongs to them.
Many do not KNOW what the proper
treatment is that they should demand,
as we understand ordinary civility.
They are taught theoretically in the
| schools, but it is much like teaching
them to swim without going into the
water, and the examples they see at
| home of the extreme familiarity be-
tween the sexes more than counterbal-
ances the effect of mere theoretical
teaching.
What is needed is practical training
every day in the :" little things" the
ordinary civilities and proprieties
which white children begin to be
taught in their infancy, and which
marks the difference between civ
ilized and uncivllized people. 1t is only
| by everyday training that they can be
taught what is, and what is not, proper
| for boys and girls to say and do before
each other, and the remedy for their
pernicious habits of familiarity is daily
training to "keep hands off, of each
| other.
Training of this kind in self-restraint
will teach the young men to treat the
girls respectfully, and what is more inn
portant, teach the girls to demand court
eous treatment from the boys.
A young Hawaiian woman, teacher,
herself graduate of boarding school,
in commenting on the fact that so many
girls misbehave the first few years after
leaving the boarding schools, said:
" But what can you expect when these
boys and girls have never been trained
how to treat each other2 If you want
Hawaiians ever to be like white people
you must have boarding schools for boys
and girls together, and they never will
behave properly until you do have such
schools"
The small family school, away from
the distractions and designations of the
city; with teaching force sufficient to
reach every pupil with direct personal
effort and influence; where the indus
| tries absorb the overflow of energy and
animal life, offer the ideal condition for a
home where boys may be trained in
manliness, self-reliance and purpose
Il