The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1900-07-11

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The state must see 10 e that every
child must learn to speak the verna-
cular read II, and write Il intelligently.
The vernacular " the Territory OF Ha-
wall is English by law. No man can
serve on jury who Is ignorant OF n, %
language. No one can become a mem
Der ~ the Legislature without under
standing H. All proceedings must be
carried on in English. Therefore In 'ts
teaching the state schools mHst devote
themselves TO teaching in English. As
a fact the state has been preparing for
this for fourteen or fifteen years. There
Is only one school now taught in the
Hawaiian language and that of course
is an anomaly that must cease, because
every child taught solely in such a
school must be barred either from sit
ting on a jury or from a seat in the
Legislature. and it is the business Of
the state to give every one Of its chill
dren an opportunity OF serving in both
capacities,
Beyond the intelligent knowledge of
the vernacular and the arts of reading
and writing, the state should see that
it's children have sufficient knowledge
of arithmetic to calculate prices and
wages, and keep ordinary accounts.
The intricacies of numbers, the knowl-
edge of algebra and the higher mathe-
MATES are quite unnecessary for the
average child, and yet numbers are
allowed to waste their time upon such
subjects and others kindred to them
Beyond this there should be a fund
of general information supplied to the
child A knowledge of his own Terri
tory, a knowledge of the United States,
of the Constitution, of the general
features Of history and geography, of
current events and so forth. Not mere
cut and dried facts, but given CONVEX
sationally and so that the child mind
can assimilate and understand them.
You do not want such teaching as was
discovered in one of the schools and a
leading one, on the mainland, where
an intelligent child, who had learned
america" by heart, and repeated 1t
satisfactorily, produced on paper,
MY country tissuf the
Sweet land Of libaet tea"
and explained "libaet tea" as lone of
our imports from China" 20
Hand in hand with the general open.
ing of the intelligence should go the
teaching Of manual dexterity. The
primary schools may not go very far
tn q, hut oh % 90
far. All girls should be taught to sew.
1t is better for them to know how to
stitch and mend than to be able to
give a definition of a parallelogram.
Boys should at least be able to use sim
pie tools intelligently, beginning with
the pocket knife, which can be made to
teach a lot of things.
Where practicable, and in many city
schools and all country schools it is
practicable, children should be taught
little gardening, which would involve
an elementary knowledge of botany.
The dignity and necessity of labor
should be taught and inculcated, and
ideals should be put before the chill
dren which would not necessarily make
them aim at becoming poor teachers,
poorer preachers or worse lawyers.
Out of class of nine which left one
of the principal schools in this city re-
Gently, two girls obtained positions in
a dressmaking establishment, and thus
began to support themselves, and the
remaining seven promptly entered the
Normal School with a view of becoming
teachers. Education which leads to
such results is not a success. Educa-
ton should prepare the pupils to work,
it should not make them despise, or be
careless of the ordinary channels of
labor. In point of fact the ordinary
compulsory state education might stop
at IA rather than at Is with advantage
to the community at large
1t is ofen a thousand pities to see a
great hulking boy of sixteen or seven
teen still porting over half conned and
ill understood books, when he might be
earning a living for himself and es-
tablishing a future competence by the
practice of early thrift In point of
fact education, as we call education,
may be very thoroughly overdone, may
be surrounded by a lot of misplaced,
half scientific jargon, whose professors
are like the quack scientists of Guilt
ver's Island of Iaputa one of whom
spent his time in trying to extract sun
beams from cucumbers. What we want
to fit a child for its early battle in life
is to supply with a little practical
knowledge, and leave all the isms and
the ologieS and the cepts to the dry as |
dusts and pseudo philosophers.
Not, of course, that opportunity |
should not be given to obtain higher
but that should be in insti- |
tutions set apart, to enter which a re-
quirement should be made that the
pupil has the proper mental caliber for
his or her studies.
There has always been two schools |
of educational thought, one visionary, |