



































The Contributions of Mataio Kekuanaoa to the Curriculum of Hawaiian Schools


The Role of Mataio Kekuanaoa in Directing and Challenging the Curriculum 

for Hawaiian Schools during the Nineteenth Century 
 

Carl Kalani Beyer 

National University 

 

 

Abstract 

During the Westernization of Hawai‛i, 

curriculum helped support the spread of an 

American hegemony. This study focuses on the 

role played by Mataio Kekuanaoa, who as 

President of the Board of Education, directed and 

challenged the curriculum for Hawaiian schools 

during the nineteenth century. His sponsorship of 

policies that challenged this inexorable “progress” 

towards Americanization offers a view of the 

curriculum history of Hawai‛i not previously 

reported.   

 

Introduction 

Even before the advent of Western 

explorers, Hawai„i was a differentiated society 

based upon competing chiefdoms and a stratified 

social system within each chiefdom. The diversity 

of Hawaiians‟ identity prevented a united front in 

resisting the encroaching colonizers. Moreover, 

the changes wrought by the forceful uniting of the 

island chain under one ruler and the legal erasure 

of the traditional Hawaiian culture when that ruler 

died led to further schisms among Hawaiians. 

This lack of unity among Hawaiians weakened 

their resistance to the development of a Western-

style hegemonic structure that was largely 

delivered through the establishment of schools 

and a curriculum that enabled the colonizers to 

successfully bring Hawai„i into the global orbit of 

an American empire.    

The purpose of this study is to 

demonstrate that in spite of the powerful 

American forces involved in spreading an 

American hegemony over Hawai‛i during the 

nineteenth century there was some coherent and 

organized resistance from one Hawaiian leader. 

While the history of Hawaiian curricular 

innovations throughout two periods of time 

moved steadily towards the state where schools 

helped support the spread of an American 

hegemony, for eight years during the second 

period under the Presidency of Mataio 

Kekuanaoa, the Kingdom‟s Board of Education 

sponsored policies that challenged this inexorable 

“progress” towards Americanizing and preparing 

Hawaiians to be citizens of the United States. 

Agreeing with the contention made by Bernard 

Bailyn (1960) that research should provide a 

critique of previous studies and the call by 

Hayden White (1999) that history is about 

retrieving the past in order to grasp the present, 

this study focuses on the role played by 

Kekuanaoa in directing and challenging the 

curriculum for Hawaiian schools during the 

second period of extending an American 

hegemony. This approach is taken in order to 

offer a view of the education for Hawaiians not 

previously reported and provide a means to 

challenge the perspective that Hawaiians readily 

accepted the goals of the dominant class of 

Americans. In order to provide the context for 

Kekuanaoa‟s role, this study presents the 

extension of American hegemony, utilizing 

curricular innovations over two time periods: the 

first 20 years of introducing a Western curriculum 

and the last 40 years of the nineteenth century. 



2 

 

The theoretical framework that provides 

the direction for this paper is the theory of 

hegemony.  According to Antonio Gramsci 

(1971), hegemony is power achieved through a 

combination of coercion and consent. He argued 

that the ruling classes achieve domination not by 

force or coercion alone, but also by creating 

subjects who willingly submit to rule. 

“Spontaneous” consent is given by the masses to 

the dominant group. In the hegemonic system, 

democracy exists through shared decision 

making. Nevertheless, the intellectual and moral 

leadership of members of the dominant group 

enable them to acquire the consent of the masses. 

Consent itself derives from the prestige (and 

consequent confidence) of the dominant group. 

With this consent the dominant group is able to 

control the political economy (a state whereby 

political and economic organizations function 

together in a society).  

  

Mataio Kekuanao’s Background 

Mataio Kekuanaoa was born to kaukau 

ali‘i status. During the traditional Hawaiian 

culture, the kaukau ali‘i were the server class of 

chiefs who were high enough in status to have 

contact with the ali‘i nui (high chiefs) but not 

high enough to intermarry with them (Beckwith 

1940; Handy 1927; I‛i 1959; Malo 1951).  In 

1819, the „āinoa era replaced the kapu system 

when the traditional culture was terminated. 

‘Āinoa is a Hawaiian metaphor involving 

adopting Western ways in order to preserve 

Hawaiian sovereignty. As a term, it originally 

referred to freedom of choice or literally free 

eating. From freedom to choose one‟s life style, 

including one‟s religious practice, the ‘āinoa 

metaphor eventually evolved to include any 

efforts relating to preserving Hawaiian freedom 

or sovereignty. During the „āinoa era there was a 

mixture of thinking and practices, melding the 

traditional Hawaiian culture with Christian 

teachings. One example of this hybridization was 

the end of close-relation marriages among the 

chiefs. The consequence of this change was the 

marriages of ali‘i nui to kaukau ali‘i. In spite of 

this new role, the kaukau ali‘i continued to serve 

the ali‘i nui. Kekuanaoa was one of the many 

kaukau ali‘i who adopted this new role during the 

‘āinoa era. They were educated by the 

missionaries, and expected to both sustain the 

traditional and incorporate the best of the new 

ways (Kame'eleihiwa 1992). He was allowed to 

marry high chieftess Kina‛u, daughter of 

Kamehameha I. The offspring of this marriage 

were the last two Kings of the Kamehameha 

lineage, Alexander Liholiho (Kamehameha IV) 

and Lota Kapuāiua (Kamehameha V). Even 

before his marriage, he was given important 

positions in the Kingdom, serving as Commander 

in Chief of the Kingdom‟s army and Governor of 

the island of O‛ahu.  Under the Constitutional 

government, he served as a member of the House 

of Nobles. The constitution delegated absolute 

powers to the sovereign and the premier; it 

established a bicameral parliament, consisting of 

a hereditary House of Nobles made up of chiefs, 

and an elective House of Representatives; it 

ordained that all new laws were to be in tune with 

God, passed by a majority of both houses, and 

signed by both the King and the Premier 

(Kuykendall, 1966).  Kekuanaoa‟s most important 

role for this study was serving as the President of 

the Board of Education from1860 to 1868. 

 

Forging a Collaborative Relationship 

Before Westerners arrived, the Hawaiian 

culture was a series of competing chiefdoms 

where the leaders‟ primary responsibility was to 

provide pono (a balanced, peaceful life) for all of 

its members. Hawaiians were an intelligent 

people who used varying forms of education to 



3 

 

inculcate members into their culture. Between 

1778, when Captain James Cook made contact 

with Hawaiians, and 1820, when the American 

Protestant missionaries arrived, Hawaiian society 

was already undergoing transformation caused by 

the collision of external and internal forces. 

Kekuanaoa was one of the key Hawaiian chiefs 

that provided a peaceful transformation of 

Hawai‛i from chiefdom to modern nation. In 

1823, he accompanied Kamehameh II to England 

where he experienced first-hand the advances 

made by Western science and technology 

(Kanahele 1986). When the missionaries arrived, 

they immediately began to collaborate with him 

and other Hawaiian chiefs to transform the 

Kingdom into a modern state.   

Western education arrived in the Islands 

when the American Board of Commissioners for 

Foreign Missions (ABCFM) sent their first 

company of missionaries in 1819. The American 

Protestant missionaries, who arrived in Hawai„i in 

1820, were the primary curriculum developers 

who introduced Western education. For the 

missionaries from the ABCFM, Hawai„i was one 

of many frontiers for their religion and culture. 

Their adherence to an aggressive brand of 

Calvinism and New England values led to the 

following two-fold mission: 1) converting 

Hawaiians to Christianity and 2) remolding the 

Hawaiian society into the image of New England.  

Connected to this mission was the need to help 

the Kingdom remain sovereign.  

  

First Period of American Hegemony 

During the nineteenth century, there were 

two periods of hegemonization involving 

educational innovations. The first period was 

when the missionary educators, working with 

Hawaiian leaders, strove to use education in the 

formation of consciousness, which involved 

getting Native students to accept the superiority 

of white culture and the inferiority of their own 

culture. As the result of their collaboration with 

Hawaiian monarchs, the missionaries developed 

as the intellectual and moral leaders through their 

work in creating a modern Christian Hawaiian 

state. Working with Hawaiian leaders, the 

missionary educators strove to use education in 

the formation of consciousness, involving getting 

Native students to accept the superiority of white 

culture and the inferiority of their own culture. 

This mirrors Gramsci (1994), who emphasized 

that hegemony is the exercise of ideological 

power. Education, especially teaching in the 

vernacular, was important in providing active 

consent of Natives through mass democratic 

organization. Gramsci (1971) stated that 

“ideology is crucial to creating consent, it is the 

medium through which certain ideas are 

transmitted and more important, held to be true” 

(29). 

The missionaries preferred to teach all 

classes of Hawaiians equally. But from the 

beginning, the first pupils were the chiefs 

(Alexander 1902).  According to missionary 

historians, over the next twenty years, 

missionaries implemented an educational 

program in five steps (Alexander 1902; 

Alexander and Atkinson 1888; Bingham 1847; 

Dibble 1909; Westervelt 1911). The first step was 

developing English schools for chiefs because 

they had not yet translated any reading materials 

into the Hawaiian language.  

The second step was to translate reading 

material into the Hawaiian language once it 

became clear how difficult it was to teach literacy 

in the English language (Westervelt 1911).  The 

third step was to send the best students from the 

school for chiefs to act as teachers at 

schools for commoners throughout the district. 

This system involved some training of the chiefs 

by bringing them together from all parts of the 



4 

 

district to the district school for a period of 

several weeks or months (Annual Report 1832). 

Between 1824 and 1827, nearly the entire adult 

population of the Hawaiian Islands went to 

school. This missionary educational system 

reached the peak of its development in 1832, 

when more than 52,000 pupils were enrolled in 

1,100 schools, the equivalent of 40 percent of the 

total Hawaiian population (Kuykendall, 1966).   

Hawaiians saw education as beneficial to 

preserving their culture. They were fascinated 

with the idea of being able to convey thought and 

meaning through the use of symbols.  In her 

investigation of the first Hawaiian language 

newspaper, Noenoe Silva (1999) discovered that 

the editors used the printed word to celebrate 

Hawaiian culture.  Lilikala Kameeleihiwa (1992), 

also a contemporary Hawaiian scholar, reported 

Hawaiians, chiefs and commoners alike, were 

thrilled with the palapala (learning to read) 

“because it allowed them to extend their great 

intellectual and poetic tradition” (142).    

Because the education process helped to 

prepare leaders, voters, and consumers, it also 

met the goals of Hawaiians. Teaching in the 

vernacular was an important part of the education 

process since by providing literacy in their 

language, mass education was realized quickly. 

Once Lāhaināluna High School was established, 

learning in the vernacular allowed Hawaiian elites 

to receive an academic education (Lecker 1938).  

The establishment of Lāhaināluna High 

School as a teacher-training center resolved the 

dilemma posed by inadequately prepared 

teachers. This was the fourth step in the 

development of an educational system by the 

missionaries during the early years. The purpose 

of the school was to prepare young men to 

become teachers in the common schools or 

assistant teachers of religion. It was also 

determined that the school would use the manual 

labor system and a common school curriculum 

(Frear 1920; Westervelt 1911).   

An appeal to the American Board for 

more mission helpers satisfied the fifth step.  

Between 1831 and 1849, ten mission parties 

arrived and most were sent to teach or help at the 

schools. Even though all of the recruits were 

connected spiritually to the mission‟s goals, many 

were not trained for missionary work. However, 

they were a very skilled group and quite 

adaptable to the needs of the schools (Anderson 

1872).  

During the second decade of the 

missionaries‟ presence in Hawai„i, they 

reorganized their educational endeavors by 

shifting from adult to child education and by 

improving the training of teachers. However, by 

1840, the missionaries were obliged to turn the 

common schools over to the government. Bernard 

Wist (1937), the premiere scholar on public 

education during the nineteenth century, 

speculated that the cuts in financial support from 

the American Board due to the economic 

depression in the United States led to the 

missionaries‟ encouragement of the government‟s 

actions regarding the schools. While the schools 

were a valuable adjunct to the mission, the only 

course of action was to surrender the schools to 

the government because of insufficient funds to 

build schools and pay teachers.  

In 1840 and 1841, the first school laws 

were passed whereby the government assumed 

charge of the common schools and gave general 

sanction to what had been previously only local 

edicts of the governors. Under these laws, a 

superintendent supervised school agents from 

each of the islands. Attendance at school became 

compulsory for all children between the ages of 4 

and 14, and local communities were  organized to 

cooperate with the resident missionaries in the 

selection and support of the teachers (Wist 1937). 



5 

 

The agents organized the parents in each 

community to provide for teachers and 

schoolhouses through a labor tax. Over the next 

20 years, the public school system was 

reorganized with the cooperation of the 

government. In 1846, Kamehameha III began this 

process by establishing the Department of 

Education, headed by the Minister of Public 

Instruction. Reverend William Richards, who had 

already resigned from the mission and was an 

advisor to the King, was the first to assume this 

post. The Kingdom was divided into 25 school 

districts with an appointed school agent in charge 

of each district‟s schools (Wist 1937).   

In 1833, when the school system for adult 

Hawaiians began to fall apart, the missionaries at 

most of the stations began to create select schools. 

Select or station schools were day schools 

developed for the best students from the district 

common schools. When the government took 

over the common school, most of the select 

schools joined the common schools to form the 

public school system. Coinciding with the 

development of select schools was the beginning 

of the special schools. Special schools were those 

select schools receiving sufficient financial 

support to remain independent from the public 

school system and boarded their students (Extract 

1835). The rationale to create these boarding 

schools was to provide an education for students 

under the continuous influence of the missionary 

educators. As a result, it was agreed to board 

students at the Hilo select school, begin a 

boarding school for girls at Wailuku, Maui, and 

shift from educating adults in a day situation to 

children as boarders at Lāhaināluna High School. 

All these innovations were considered to be 

experimental. By this time Reverend Richard 

Armstrong, a missionary on the island of Maui, 

replaced Reverend William Richards as the 

Minister of Public Instruction. The impetus for 

these changes was the arguments of Reverends 

David Lyman, the Principal of Hilo Boys‟ 

Boarding School, and Richard Armstrong in favor 

of more practical, character-oriented education for 

Hawaiians. Both Lyman and Armstrong had 

chosen to ply their missionary training at 

educating Hawaiians. They believed that boarding 

was deemed essential to obfuscate the bad 

influences from family members and other 

whites. Since only Lāhaināluna educated students 

beyond the age of 14, the best students at Hilo 

School for Boys, who were generally younger, 

finished their education at Lāhaināluna High 

School. Meanwhile, the girls at Wailuku School 

for Girls were groomed to become wives of 

Lāhaināluna High School graduates (Extracts 

1836).   

Initially, all three schools had a common 

school curriculum in addition to the manual labor 

and/or manual training curriculum. When 

Armstrong and Lyman spoke about wanting a 

“practical” education at all the select schools, they 

were referring to the use of manual labor and/or 

manual training curriculum. Both Lyman and 

Armstrong were prepared for their preference for 

a practical curriculum because they received 

manual labor training at the American seminaries 

they attended. Consequently, it was hoped that the 

select schools would also implement this meaning 

of “practical” into their curriculum. Even though 

the curriculum at the Lāhaināluna High School 

included manual labor, in time, its academics 

became formal. In contrast to a common school 

curriculum, a formal school curriculum was at 

this time the equivalent of a high school or 

academy curriculum. Eventually, students 

desiring to enter into the ministry were provided 

training in the classics after they had finished the 

required four-year course of instruction (Wist 

1937).     

 



6 

 

Second Period of American Hegemony  

A second period of hegemonization 

involving educational innovations began during 

the last 40 years of the nineteenth century. This 

period differed from the previous era due to the 

fact that politically and economically Hawai‛i 

was now internationally connected. There was 

also a real threat of force behind the emerging 

dominant Americans through the presence of 

American military as the result of the leasing of 

Pearl Harbor by the Kingdom for an American 

naval base in 1876. The economy became 

international due to the success of the sugar 

plantation industry, which necessitated that the 

government aid in providing markets and a labor 

supply.  Gramsci (1971) postulated that “the more 

the immediate economic life of a nation is 

subordinate to international relations, the more a 

particular party will come to represent this 

situation and to exploit it, with the aim of 

preventing rival parties from gaining the upper 

hand (176).”  As second generation missionaries 

came to adulthood, their determination to protect 

the political economy their fathers had developed 

led them to apply coercive force in 1887 and 

1892, ultimately leading to their assuming total 

governmental control.  The success of coercion 

by whites led to policies, including curricular 

ones, which were often antithesis to the best 

interests of the independent Hawaiian nation.  

Whereas, in the previous period, Hawai„i was 

treated as a sovereign nation, during this period it 

was already considered a part of the American 

empire.  As a result, curricular innovations were 

undertaken based upon assimilating Hawaiians 

into the political and economic structure of 

America.  This required educating Hawaiians for 

low-skill positions in the economy, which led to 

an inferior status that would last for generations.   

The imposition of American hegemony 

occurred because underlying the collaboration 

between missionaries who wanted to transform 

Hawai‛i into a Christian civilization and the 

Hawaiian chiefs who wanted to preserve the 

Kingdom‟s sovereignty was a contradiction. Both 

missionaries and Hawaiians needed to be 

considered partners for this collaboration to lead 

to the success of both parties‟ goals. In the early 

years of the missionaries‟ development of an 

educational system as well as the transformation 

of the political system and economic structure 

both goals were achieved and there was a 

semblance of partnership. Increasingly, especially 

as a second generation of missionaries came into 

power, missionaries and other whites began to 

exert a more overt superiority over Hawaiians. 

Mataio Kekuanaoa was the most prominent 

Hawaiian to resist the conferring of an inferior 

status by the dominant class on Hawaiians. 

Nevertheless, he still believed that through 

collaboration Hawai‛i was capable of achieving 

Hawaiian and missionary goals.  

Historians of Hawai‛i have chosen to 

ignore Kekuanaoa‟s role in resisting the curricular 

goals of the dominant whites, particularly the 

American Protestant missionaries. In fact, the 

historians (many of them missionaries or their 

descendents) portrayed Kekuanaoa as a pawn for 

his son, Kamehameha IV. However, when one 

reads the voluminous speeches made by 

Kekuanaoa, it is easy to see that he was an 

intellectual and quite clear that his son was the 

pupil while he was the teacher. During his eight 

year tenure as the President of the Board of 

Education, he was prominent in providing a 

Hawaiian response to the following two reforms 

proposed by the American Protestant 

missionaries: the establishment of private female 

seminaries and the acceleration of replacing 

Hawaiian with English as the language of 

instruction.  



7 

 

Mataio Kekuanaoa’s Contribution to Female 

Education 

Although the new Mo‘ī (monarch), 

Kamehameha IV, was less friendly to the 

missionaries, he did support innovations in 

education just as his predecessor had done. In 

spite of his distrust of the American missionaries, 

he had a great deal of respect for Richard 

Armstrong, the Minister of Public Instruction. No 

doubt, Armstrong‟s support of reforming 

education through female education was 

influential (Armstrong 1858). When Armstrong 

died in 1860, Mataio Kekuanaoa, the King‟s 

father, was appointed President of the Board of 

Education (a change in the title of the position 

was made at this time).  Based upon the way 

Kekuanaoa took charge of implementing this 

reform, it was the father who was making policy 

rather than the son.  

The first experiments in female schools 

occurred during a period of little interest in 

educating girls.  Kuykendall (1932) explained that 

Hawaiian parents were less interested in the 

education of their daughters than of their sons. He 

cited the lower number of females enrolled in the 

English language select schools as evidence. 

During late 1850s, there was much interest in 

female education as evinced by discussions in 

periodicals. The journal, The Friend, initiated a 

journalistic challenge to the Advertiser and The 

Polynesian, the other prominent English language 

journals of that time period, and chided both the 

government and the ABCFM for not promoting 

female education (Female education 1857). In 

1860, the other papers responded, generating 

more interest in female education. These 

discussions were especially concerned with the 

conditions of the ordinary Hawaiian home, 

suggesting that girls be removed to boarding 

schools (Report of Education 1866). 

Kekuanaoa‟s first effort to influence the 

curriculum for Hawaiian females began on 

January 16, 1860, when he authorized the charter 

for the Makiki Family School, a school for girls. 

This was the first new school in 20 years. The 

closing of Wailuku School freed Maria Odgen, its 

former Principal, and she was called upon to 

establish this school (Kawaiahao 1885). At 

Kekuanaoa‟s recommendation, the legislative 

assembly of 1860 amended the Civil Code, giving 

specific authority to the Kingdom‟s Board of 

Education to establish family schools for 

Hawaiian girls and also made it lawful for the 

schools to be aided by the government even if 

private organizations or individuals operated them 

(Kamehameha IV 1860). He devised a 

government aid formula based upon capitation 

fees paid per child on the following scale: for 

every child in a family school (later to include 

female seminaries) for 6 months, $10; for 1 year, 

$20; for 2 to 3 years, $25; and for 4 years or 

more, $30 (Government support 1865). In 1865, 

Kekuanaoa led the Board of Education to adopt 

special rules for the governance of these schools. 

Schools were required to teach reading and 

writing in either English or Hawaiian, arithmetic, 

the elements of grammar and geography, and 

some branch of industrial work. The internal 

arrangements of the schools had to be conducive 

to the physical and moral well being of the pupils. 

The schools were to be conducted on Christian 

principles, but each set of board of directors or 

trustees was given full discretion as to the form of 

Christianity they might choose to inculcate 

(Kekuanaoa 1860). 

At the start of this period of female 

education, the driving force was still the intent to 

train Hawaiian females to proper domestic habits. 

More concern was also expressed about providing 

the graduates of female schools with the means of 

a livelihood as well. Besides training the girls to 



8 

 

produce household goods or domestic skills they 

could sell, some missionary voices called for the 

training of Hawaiian females as either 

missionaries or public school teachers (Annual 

reports 1863).    

Although Kekuanaoa was willing to have 

the government financially support female 

seminaries, it was still up to independent 

organizations or individuals to establish these 

schools. The American Protestant missionaries 

again took the lead as in the past. Reverends 

Poque and Andrews, officials of Hawaiian 

Evangelical Association (HEA), the organization 

that governed all American Protestant missionary 

activity in Hawai‛i, sent a circular to various 

missionaries throughout the Hawaiian Islands 

asking several questions. The answers to these 

questions helped to fashion policies for a series of 

new seminaries. The responses to this circular 

indicated that the following were the most 

pertinent questions (the letter containing the 

original questions was not found in the HEA 

archives). Should there be the establishment of 

female seminaries? Should the seminaries be like 

Wailuku Female Seminary? At what age should 

the education begin? How should the seminaries 

be financed?  The consensus of the responses 

included the following goal statements: establish 

seminaries using the earlier Wailuku Female 

Seminary; attract young girls and keep them at 

the seminary until they married or found 

employment; make boarding compulsory at the 

seminaries in order to keep students away from 

corrupting influences; locate seminaries away 

from major port cities where the bad influences 

were greatest; charge parents or guardians for the 

expenses of the girls; employ at least two 

instructors, one for academics and one for 

household arts, and offer a salary  high enough to 

attract competent teachers; and provide a manual 

labor and common school curriculum taught in 

the English language to help defray the costs and 

prepare girls for life after school (Alexander 

1858; Clark 1858; Johnson 1858; Paris 1858).  

    In some ways, the efforts to educate 

females at the missionary schools were really 

meant to impact Hawaiian men. Noenoe Silva 

(1999), in her translations of Richard Armstrong‟s 

government paper, Ka Hou Hawaii, illustrated 

this idea. Armstrong reported that “in 

enlightened/civilized lands, women work at 

sewing, taking care of children, cleaning, and 

teaching school. Then, life is comfortable. If their 

bodies and their houses are clean, their husbands 

do not look for other women” (98-99). Silva 

surmised after translating an editorial in this paper 

that Armstrong thought female education “was a 

way to encourage the use of English language 

schools toward socializing the population in white 

ways, with the emphasis, however on men – 

women were to be the tool whereby men would 

learn” (99).  

The missionaries appeared in concert with 

Kekuanaoa‟s goal for educating Hawaiian 

females when they announced that they wanted 

the Natives to become teachers or adept in some 

industrial skill. The missionaries borrowed the 

structure of the female seminaries from the 

United States to accomplish their goal (Beyer 

2003). The reality was that since the missionaries 

believed Hawaiians to be inferior the curriculum 

for Hawaiian girls was different from that for 

white girls. Reverend Nathan Emerson (1884) 

explained why this was true: 

 

The educational needs of the Hawaiian 

girls are greater than those of the girl 

born of enlightened white parents.  In 

the case of the Hawaiian girls there is 

almost total lack of home-education to 

begin with.  Morals and manners, habits 

of industry, thrift and economy – plants 

of slow growth – together with the 



9 

 

necessary book-knowledge, which I am 

far from despising, have to be imparted 

to her all at once. (32) 

 

He proposed that the curriculum for Hawaiian 

girls “consist of a thorough and systematic 

training in all the essential or closely allied 

branches of housekeeping” (Emerson 1884, 33).  

 Kekuanaoa envisioned schools for 

Hawaiian girls as a means to prepare them for 

citizenship in a sovereign Hawaiian Kingdom. As 

adults, he expected Hawaiian females would 

influence their children and husbands to value 

education and act responsibly.  He also believed 

that the curriculum at the seminaries would 

prepare them to be teachers or use the industrial 

skills they learned to become productive member 

of society. By contrast, the American Protestant 

missionaries were intent on inculcating an 

acceptance on the part of the Hawaiian girls to an 

inferior status in the Kingdom. The curriculum at 

the female seminaries was meant to pave the way 

for whites to eventually control the entire 

Hawaiian political economy. Consequently, as 

English language replaced Hawaiian as the 

language of instruction, Hawaiian females were 

less likely to be employed as teachers even when 

their education was provided in the English 

language. American teachers were imported to 

provide both instruction and indoctrination to an 

American hegemony. 

 

Mataio Kekuanaoa’s Resistance to English 

Language Instruction 

Another reform proposed by the American 

Protestant missionaries during Kekuanaoa‟s term 

as President of the Board of Education was the 

move to replace instruction in the vernacular with 

English. All factions, Hawaiian, missionary, and 

anti-missionary whites, were involved with this 

issue. The missionaries were adamant that 

teaching commoners in their own language was 

preferable to teaching them in English. Primarily, 

the missionaries began schools, teaching in the 

vernacular because they believed students learned 

in their own language at a more rapid rate. After 

translating the Bible, they discovered how much 

better the words of the Bible sounded in the 

Hawaiian language. Many of the teachers at the 

special schools for Hawaiians were reluctant to 

abandon the Hawaiian language for this reason. 

Ralph Stueber (1964), whose dissertation focused 

on the way language helped to create a unique 

multicultural community in Hawai„i, had a 

different explanation for their behavior:  

 

The missionaries understood the value of 

the Hawaiian tongue as one of the few 

remaining binding forces in the 

Hawaiian community and consequently 

became fluent in it as quickly as 

possible. It was this consideration as 

much as any thing else that won for them 

a high degree of respect and friendship 

of the Hawaiian people. (42) 

 

It also was apparent that more advanced topics 

were learned when Hawaiians were taught from 

translations of Americans texts than was 

accomplished if the students were taught entirely 

in the English language (Minutes of Hawaiian 

1854; Report of Waioli 1860).  

Conflict arose between missionaries and 

the majority of the anti-missionary white 

community when the latter strongly favored 

teaching Hawaiians in the English language. Prior 

to the 1850s, the anti-missionary white strident 

voices attacked the missionaries for teaching in 

the vernacular. The critics of the missionaries 

contended that teaching in the vernacular enabled 

the missionaries to control the Hawaiians and 

ensured the success of their proselytizing mission.  

After the governmental and economic changes of 

the 1840s and 1850s, the missionary commitment 



10 

 

to the Native language was challenged by the 

necessity of Hawaiians to communicate in 

English due to the increased demands of 

commercial centers, marriages between Hawaiian 

women and other races, and the increased size 

and influence of the English speaking foreign 

community (Stueber 1864).   

As the result of the push to institute 

English instruction, the Minister of Public 

Instruction, Richard Armstrong, encouraged those 

select schools with the ability to teach in English 

to switch languages for instruction. These English 

select schools would require that the parents pay 

$25 towards the tuition (later it would be half of 

whatever was the tuition cost). The common 

schools continued to be free and taught in the 

vernacular. Over the next 40 years, Hawaiian 

parents continued in increasing numbers to pay 

the extra tuition. Just before the Constitution of 

1887, 54 out of 131 public schools were English 

select schools. These schools tended to be larger, 

so they represented about two-thirds of the public 

school population (Gibson 1886). While English 

language instruction predominated in the 

commercial centers, vernacular schools were still 

thriving in rural and remote areas. Hawaiians who 

were living closer to traditional ways populated 

these communities; as a consequence, they tended 

to prefer instruction in the Hawaiian language. 

After the new constitution in 1887, the effort to 

switch to teaching in English increased (Bishop 

1892). By the eve of the Revolution in 1892, only 

5 percent of the Hawaiian public school 

population was still educated in the vernacular. 

After the Revolution, the last remaining 

vernacular schools were closed and English was 

made the language of schools and all government 

transactions. In 1895, legislation made it illegal to 

use the Hawaiian language in any public 

transaction, including education (Castle 1896). 

Even though missionary evidence 

substantiates the support of Hawaiian parents for 

English language schools, the actual transition 

was slow until whites had control of the 

government under the Constitution of 1887. It 

may be that Hawaiian parents were becoming 

aware of how the political and economic changes 

made English proficiency more and more 

essential. However, support for the transition to 

English was not universal. Mataio Kekuanaoa 

questioned its merits throughout his reports as the 

President of the Board of Education. He felt that 

“the way to destroy the Hawaiian Kingdom and 

the feelings and attitudes in favor of it is to allow 

the people to acquire contempt for their native 

language” (Kekuanaoa 1861). In his 1864 

Biennial Report, he criticized the education 

provided at the English select schools:   

 

The result of experience warrants the 

assertion, that the attempt to give 

Hawaiian children, whose language out 

of school, in the play-ground, and at 

their homes, is exclusively Hawaiian, an 

education in day school, through the 

medium of English text books only, has 

not met with success enough, when 

compared with the advantages to be 

derived from a common school 

education in their own language, to 

warrant the change in favor of the 

English, even were the expense not so 

enormously disproportionate. (6) 

 

The expenses were higher for these English 

language schools than for the vernacular schools 

because of the need to provide housing and pay 

higher salaries for the predominantly American 

teachers in these schools. For example, in 1886, 

the total cost of education per year for the 4,262 

student enrolled in the common schools was 

$68,198.37 ($16/pupil); the total cost of education 

per year for the 8,974 students enrolled in the 



11 

 

English language schools was $233,333.14 

($26/pupils) (Gibson 1886). Kekuanaoa warned 

that if the Hawaiian language were lost, dire 

consequence would befall the independence of the 

Hawaiian Kingdom. He was not suggesting 

abandoning English   instruction.  Instead, he 

called for a bilingual approach. Over the next four 

years, a few schools were listed in Biennial 

Reports as practitioners of bilingual instruction, 

but no details provided regarding their success 

(Kekuanaoa 1866, 1868). Because the teachers at 

the English select schools were usually whites 

from the United States, the public schools would 

have to find teachers competent in both 

languages. Graduates of Lāhaināluna Seminary, 

Hilo Boys‟ Boarding School, and the female 

seminaries were capable of doing the job. 

However, by then, Charles R. Bishop was the 

President of the Board of Education.  

Although Bishop was not a missionary, he 

was considered to be a member of the pro-

missionary faction. Even his marriage to a 

Hawaiian did not alter his taking actions that 

supported missionary rather than Hawaiian 

interests. Whenever he was faced with the 

decision to use educated Hawaiians to teach in 

schools other than common schools, he declined 

to do so. In a book on Bishop, Harold Kent 

(1965) implied that Bishop‟s concern about the 

morality of Hawaiians kept him from placing 

them in teaching positions. An example of this 

occurred when Charles King, a graduate of 

Kamehameha School for Boys and Oswego 

Normal School, applied to teach at the 

Kamehameha School. Bishop denied his 

employment. This action precipitated a policy at 

the Kamehameha Schools that would last for over 

50 years of not employing a Hawaiian as a 

teacher or administrator. Furthermore, Bishop‟s 

commitment to English becoming the language of 

the nation also precluded his acceptance of 

bilingualism.  

Walter Murray Gibson was the next 

President of the Board of Education after Bishop.  

Gibson had been a part of the anti-missionary 

white community ever since he arrived in 

Hawai‛i. It was due to this relationship with the 

missionary faction that King Kalakaua, who was 

attempting to wrest control away from the 

dominant Americans at this time (Kuykendall 

1968), appointed him to his position. Gibson, like 

Kekuanaoa, was supportive of preserving the 

Hawaiian language. However, by the time that 

Gibson took over as President of the Board of 

Education in 1884, the spread of English 

instruction was well advanced. Nevertheless, he 

called for hiring a Hawaiian language instructor 

for the larger schools in order to give instruction 

for two or three hours per week to Hawaiian 

children (Gibson 1886).  

There were other practical reasons for the 

increase in English instruction among the schools 

of Hawai„i. One reason was that as immigrant 

workers of other races began to increase after the 

Reciprocity Treaty with the United States, their 

children were required by law to attend the 

neighborhood school. Teaching in the English 

language made more sense than in the vernacular. 

From 1880 to 1894, non-Hawaiians increased 

from 8 to 36 percent of the population (Schmitt 

1968). A second reason was that the missionaries 

switched to English instruction in their special 

schools because their curriculum demanded it. As 

the special schools began to turn to a form of 

manual training, English instruction became 

necessary to recruit teachers skilled enough to 

teach either the academic or manual training 

courses. After the late 1880s, the increased 

emphasis on manual training among the public 

schools would also require hiring more foreign 

teachers conversant in the English language and 



12 

 

knowledgeable in the skills of manual training 

(Beyer 2007). By the end of sovereignty, the 

percent of English-speaking foreign teachers was 

nearly 70 percent of the teaching force at the 

independent schools and nearly 50 percent at the 

government schools (Castle, 1896).   

 

Conclusion 

During most of the nineteenth century 

after the traditional culture was terminated, 

Westerners working with Hawaiians prepared 

Hawai‛i to become a modern sovereign nation. 

While the relationship to make this a reality 

between American missionaries and Hawaiians 

were outwardly collaborative, both groups had 

agendas that were in conflict. Hawaiians wanted 

their nation to be independent and sovereign. 

They envisioned the relationship necessary to 

make this happen was a partnership whereby 

Westerners provided advice and Hawaiians 

controlled and directed the nation. The 

missionaries‟ agenda was to transform Hawai‛i 

into a “civilized” and Christian nation. However, 

their belief that Hawaiians were inferior led to 

them imposing an American hegemony whereby 

missionaries and other whites served as the 

dominant class and Hawaiians as the subordinate 

class.  

During the 1860s, when Kekuanaoa 

served as President of the Board of Education, 

two reforms were transforming the education of 

Hawaiians. The first reform was the sponsorship 

of female private education. Mataio Kekuanaoa 

provided the leadership and helped to ensure 

success through government funding. His efforts 

to guide the curriculum for female education 

established the means for an alternative path 

whereby educated Hawaiians would lead the 

continued modernization of the Hawaiian 

Kingdom. When the American Protestant 

missionaries took the lead in establishing female 

seminaries, they instituted different plans. For the 

members of the dominant class, educating 

Hawaiian females was a way to subordinate 

Hawaiians.  

The second reform was replacing the 

Hawaiian language with English as the language 

of instruction. Mataio Kekuanaoa was the most 

prominent voice in the Hawaiian government to 

understand the danger it posed to the survival of 

Hawaiian sovereignty. After Kekuanaoa died, 

Charles Bishop became President of the School 

Board. Bishop was a long-time ally of the 

missionary faction. Upon assuming control of the 

school system, he accelerated the goal of the 

dominant class to prepare Hawaiians to become 

American citizens. Of course, this citizenship was 

to be subordinate to whites.  Thus, the dominant 

class of whites embarked on a concerted effort to 

Americanize education for Hawaiians by 

replacing the Hawaiian language with English, 

employing more American instructors, and 

utilizing a common school and manual training 

curriculum.
 
When they needed to convince the 

people of the United States to support annexation, 

they emphasized the dominance of American 

institutions in Hawai‛i, particularly the use of the 

English language.  

The replacement of Hawaiians by 

missionaries and other whites as the dominant 

class relegated the true people of Hawai‛i to 

secondary status. Since education was the means 

for which this secondary status was 

accomplished, this study provides contemporary 

educators with an understanding of the past that 

may help them improve education for Hawaiians 

today. Particularly, it provides research goals that 

include a critique of previous studies and retrieves 

the past in order to grasp the present. By focusing 

on the role played by Kekuanaoa in attempting to 

direct and challenge the curriculum of Hawaiian 

schools, this research accomplishes these goals. 



13 

 

This approach is taken in order to offer a view of 

Mataio Kekuanaoa not previously reported and 

provide a means to challenge the perspective that 

there were no Hawaiians who challenged the 

goals of the dominant class of Americans during 

the nineteenth century.  

 

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