Literacy

“It was like laying a corner stone of an important edifice for the nation.” (Bingham)

“I think literacy was … almost like the new technology of the time. And, that was something that was new. … When the missionaries came, there was already contact with the Western world for many years…. But this was the first time that literacy really began to take hold.”

“The missionaries, when they came, they may have been the first group who came with a [united] purpose. They came together as a group and their purpose was to spread the Gospel the teachings of the Bible.”

“But the missionaries who came, came with a united purpose … and literacy was a big part of that. Literacy was important to them because literacy was what was going to get the Hawaiians to understand the word of the Bible and the written word became very attractive to the people, and there was a great desire to learn the written word. … Hawai‘i became the most literate nation at one time.”

Click HERE for a link to comments by Manu Ka‘iama and Jon Yasuda.

“The Ali‘i Letters project “changed my perspective on the anti-missionary, anti-Anglo-Saxon rhetorical tradition that scholarship has been produced, contemporary scholarship, and it is not to discredit that scholarship, but just to change a paradigm, to shift the paradigm, and it shifted mine.” (Kaliko Martin, Research Assistant, Awaiaulu)

Click HERE for a link to comments by Kaliko Martin.

“The missionary effort is more successful in Hawai‘i than probably anywhere in the world, in the impact that it has on the character and the form of a nation. And so, that history is incredible; but history gets so blurry …”

“The missionary success cover decades and decades becomes sort of this huge force where people feel like the missionaries got off the boat barking orders … where they just kind of came in and took over. They got off the boat and said ‘stop dancing,’ ‘put on clothes,’ don’t sleep around.’ And it’s so not the case ….”

“The missionaries arrived here, and they’re a really remarkable bunch of people. They are scholars, they have got a dignity that goes with religious enterprise that the Hawaiians recognized immediately. …”

“The Hawaiians had been playing with the rest of the world for forty-years by the time the missionaries came here. The missionaries are not the first to the buffet and most people had messed up the food already.”

“(T)hey end up staying and the impact is immediate. They are the first outside group that doesn’t want to take advantage of you, one way or the other, get ahold of their goods, their food, or your daughter. But, they couldn’t get literacy. It was intangible, they wanted to learn to read and write”. (Puakea Nogelmeier)

Click HERE for a link to comments by Puakea Nogelmeier.

Many Are the People – Few Are the Books

“Having just begun to learn to read, Ka‘ahumanu, about this time (1822), embarked with her husband, and visited his islands with a retinue of some eight hundred persons, including several chiefs, and Auna, and William Beals, whom the queen requested us to send as her teacher.”

“On their arrival, the next day, at Waimea, they gave a new impulse to the desire among the people to be instructed, much to the surprise and gratification of Messrs. Whitney and Ruggles, who said their house for several days was thronged with natives pleading for books.”

“They immediately took three hundred under instruction. Their former pupils were now demanded as teachers for the beginners. Ka‘ahumanu, spurring on these efforts, soon sent back to Kamāmalu at Oahu the following characteristic letter.”

“‘This is my communication to you: tell the puu A-i o-e-o-e (posse of Long necks) to send some more books down here. Many are the people – few are the books.”

“I want elua lau (800) Hawaiian books to be sent hither. We are much pleased to learn the palapala. By and by, perhaps, we shall be akamai, skilled or wise. Give my love to Mr. and Mrs. Bingham, and the whole company of Long necks.’” (Ka‘ahumanu; Bingham)

Printing Press

“The first printing press at the Hawaiian Islands was imported by the American missionaries, and landed from the brig Thaddeus, at Honolulu …. It was not unlike the first used by Benjamin Franklin, and was set up in a thatched house standing a few fathoms from the old mission frame house”. (Hunnewell; Ballou)

Without the printing press, the written Hawaiian language, and a learned people of that time, we would know little about the past. (Muench)

“Perhaps never since the invention of printing was a printing press employed so extensively as that has been at the Sandwich islands, with so little expense, and so great a certainty that every page of its productions would be read with attention and profit.” (Barber, 1833)

In the meantime, a Wells-model press arrived at Lahainaluna in 1832 and it carried the major load of the printing there. The mission press also printed newspaper, hymnals, schoolbooks, broadsides, fliers, laws, and proclamations. The mission presses printed over 113,000,000 sheets of paper in 20 years. (Mission Houses)

Literacy was Sought by the People

“A key point in Liholiho’s plan required the missionaries to first teach the aliʻi to read and write. The missionaries agreed to the King’s terms and instruction began soon after.” (KSBE)

The arrival of the first company of American missionaries in Hawai¬ʻi in 1820 marked the beginning of Hawaiʻi’s phenomenal rise to literacy. The chiefs became proponents for education and edicts were enacted by the King and the council of chiefs to stimulate the people to reading and writing.

“That the sudden introduction of the Hawaiian nation in its unconverted state, to general English or French literature, would have been safe and salutary, is extremely problematical.”

“The initiation of the rulers and others into the arts of reading and writing, under our own guidance, brought to their minds forcibly, and sometimes by surprise, moral lessons as to their duty and destiny which were of immeasurable importance.” (Hiram Bingham)

“This literacy initiative was continually supported by the aliʻi. Under Liholiho, ships carrying teachers were not charged harbor fees. During a missionary paper shortage, the government stepped in to cover the difference, buying enough paper to print roughly 13,500 books.”

“During this period, there were approximately 182,000 Hawaiians living throughout 1,103 districts in the archipelago. Extraordinarily, by 1831, the kingdom government financed all infrastructure costs for the 1,103 school houses and furnished them with teachers. Our kūpuna sunk their teeth into reading and writing like a tiger sharks and would not let go.” (KSBE)

“This legendary rise in literacy climbed from a near-zero literacy rate in 1820, to between 91 to 95 percent by 1834. That’s only twelve years from the time the first book was printed!” (KSBE)

It was through the cooperation and collaboration between the Ali‘i, people and missionaries that this was able to be accomplished.

Click HERE to view/download more on Literacy.

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