| This study uses an historical methodology involving a narrative and several theoretical frameworks to investigate the history of manual and industrial education in schools for Hawaiians in order to connect this curriculum to its history in the United States and Europe, provide a means to challenge the perspective that education benefited Hawaiians, and reveal the roots for current educational problems facing Native Hawaiians. Manual and industrial education involved the manual labor and manual training systems that are credited to Johann Pestalozzi as the founder. The American Protestant missionaries were the primary curriculum developers and the leaders of the movement that transformed Hawai'i into a modern state. Hawaiian society was transformed by transculturation, a process whereby old and new ways merge through the interaction of Hawaiians and Westerners. During this process, Hawaiians were guided by the 'ainoa metaphor, referring to efforts to preserve freedom or independence. The missionaries were guided by their own metaphor, "laboring in the field," referring to the spread of both Christianity and American civilization. The plot for this narrative is tragedy since in pursuing their respective metaphors the missionaries' efforts resulted in their losing Hawaiians as converts and acquiring their distain and Hawaiians ended up losing their sovereignty, becoming second class citizens in their own society, and acquired a legacy of being overrepresented as school dropouts, prison inmates, and indigents.;In the process of demonstrating that education served missionary interests, this study establishes that due to the extensive and continuous use of manual and industrial education in the schools of Hawai'i it deserves a place within the history of this curricular practice in Europe and the United States. Although education was not being conducted in the interest of Hawaiians, after the monarchy was overthrown they accepted manual training because it provided them with skills for decent employment in lieu of the way they were being relegated to secondary status. |
