Constructing Hawai'ian Narratives through the Genesis of a Lahainaluna College in 1831

There were over 200 schools in the period of the Kingdom throughout the Hawaiians Islands. Protestant ideology founded the common schools that were taught in the medium of Hawaiian language. In 1831 the first college west of the Mississippi River was established teaching disciplines such as trigonometry, anatomy, Greek and world geography. Congress has acknowledged through the Native Hawaiian Education Act the high literacy rates of Kanaka Maoli pre-annexation, and it has further identified the serious decline of Hawaiian literacy throughout the American occupation. This paper will examine the history of these 19th century schools while seeking to locate ingrained Hawaiian narratives through a careful read of selected curriculum and literature which contributed to the high literacy rate in Hawai`i prior to annexation. The goal of this paper is to locate the pedagogy of educational practices through the medium of Hawaiian language. Furthermore, I will draw on the contemporary Hawaiian immersion period (1987-present) which is celebrating the completion of twenty years of Hawaiian language education in eighteen schools throughout Hawai`i. This comparative project will seek to juxtapose the Hawaiian worldview present in texts/books used in the classroom during the Hawaiian Immersion era (1987-present) and the Hawaiian language texts first used to teach Hawaiians in the 19th century in an attempt to understand the drastic decline of Kanaka Maoli literacy.