“For while the pros and cons of a local school for mission children were still being eagerly discussed, the mission in general assembly that year, 1831, resolved prayerfully that the time was not yet ripe and that recourse must still be had for an indefinite period to the long separations and the generosity of friends on the other side of the world.”
“The first recorded hint of Punahou as a possibility is given in that same year in the name of Brother Tinker who, one day, when riding past the scene of Mrs (Sybil) Bingham’s activities, remarked to Brother Baldwin, ‘That, sir, is the site of the future college.’”
“The year 1840 … was the year of visible beginnings. At the General Meeting of the Mission it was voted to establish a school for boys and girls at Punahou …. A committee consisting of Brethren Judd, Castle and Powell Smith was appointed to execute the plans.”
“Three Armstrong children were waiting for that first class at Punahou, four Chamberlains, two Emersons, two Forbes, five Gulicks, one Hall, three Hitchcocks, three Judds, three Parkers and two Richards.”
“For lack of a teacher, no further step was taken until the spring of the following year when Mr and Mrs (Daniel) Dole arrived. Miss Marcia Smith was appointed to assist them”. (Damon, The Friend, March 1924)
Dole brought ‘plain living and high thinking’ as the rule of the school; and by common consent, in retrospect from the present time, the work of those early teachers was nobly done. (Portraits of Missionaries)
George Ripley, a Unitarian minister, conceived a plan of plain living and high thinking. He and his associates became the founders of what is known now as “The Great Experiment.”
He had as his associates such able men as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles A. Dana, who afterwards became Assistant Secretary of War in the Cabinet of the President of the United States. This “Great Experiment” came to an end in 1846. (McKay)
“The vital principle which ought to reside in the brain is called away … to assist in … digestion and no mental energy is apparent.”
“Let a mother send a child to school with a basket of food sufficient for a laborer’s dinner, and she must expect nothing else than the return of her child at night with no increase of intellectual wealth.” (Dole, Punahou)
“From a long and somewhat intimate acquaintance I can state that I have rarely met a minister who did not have the best interests of his profession first in his thoughts, and did not abhor necessity which forces him even to think of the material side.”
“’Plain living and high thinking’ is the rule amongst them: few care for more than the average comforts and conveniences of life, and these more for the sake of an often over-burdened wife than for themselves.” (Unitarian Register)
“On July 11, 1842 fifteen of the mission children took their seats in the first session of Kapunahou School. Before the end of the year thirty-four were in attendance, thus more than justifying the estimate for accommodations.”
“In 1844 four new rooms were added, and two much beloved teachers, Mr and Mrs Rice from the station at Hana, Maui, came to make their home at Punahou.”
“Many are the stories that are told, – of wearing three pairs of pants when a whipping was judged imminent; of the old green desks in the school room between the two courts …”
“… of the tamarind tree planted near the house in 1842, which is still standing near Bingham Hall; of Father Dole’s red ruler; of Father Damon spelling down the whole school in the annual “exhibition” on the word “separate” …”
“… of the love letters passed behind books; of secret expeditions to Rocky Hill caves … of the talks on stars; of the ‘little birds who can sing and won’t sing, but must be made to sing’ …”
“… of the intense joy over letters and bundles from homes on other islands, — stories which would take a lifetime to re-tell.”
“It was a happy, busy life, a ‘unique experiment in education,’ which drew to itself the notice of strangers in California and Oregon so that many a child was sent across the Pacific to Punahou from those pioneer settlements as yet touched by no railroad and dignified by no schools other than the few scattered ones for Indians.”
“The first decade of the school was, as well as many of the later ones, filled with ‘plain living and high thinking.’ The journals and letters of those early pupils throb with the eager endeavor to be worthy of all that was being done for them …”
“… some, showing the natural result of isolated and over-stimulated childhood, refer to the writers themselves, all under twelve years of age, as ‘vile worm and thrice black-hearted sinner.’”
“But all of them are wide awake, delighted in their work as a rule, and taking keen pleasure in the rare joy of a Saturday’s tramp among the hills.” (Damon, The Friend, March 1924)
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