



































Manual Training in the U


35 

 

Anticipating, influencing, and implementing the use of the manual training 

curriculum in schools: Making a case for acknowledging missionary educators’ 

accomplishments in Hawai‘i 

 
Carl Kalani Beyer 

 
Abstract  

The purpose of this article is to demonstrate that 

the use of manual training curriculum in the 

schools of Hawaii anticipated, influenced, and 

implemented American use of this curricular 

practice continuously from 1835 until this 

curriculum was replaced by vocational education 

in the 1920s.  The objective of this article is to fill 

a gap in American curriculum history and to 

promote the accomplishments of American 

missionary educators in Hawai„i.    

 

Introduction 

The thesis of this article is that for 85 

years missionary educators anticipated and 

influenced the use of the manual training 

curriculum in schools of Hawai„i.  This study will 

demonstrate that beginning in 1835 when 

American missionaries to Hawai„i introduced the 

manual training curriculum at the Hilo Boys‟ 

Boarding School, there has been a continuous use 

of this curriculum, which included influencing the 

development of industrial education in the United 

States, and expanding this curriculum to other 

missionary and public schools in Hawai‛i until 

vocational education supplanted this form of 

education of the mind and hands in the 1920s.  

Education of the mind and hands is a general term 

used to encompass any of the following curricula: 

manual labor, industrial arts, industrial education, 

manual arts, manual training, vocational 

education (Hall 1973).  However, when one 

investigates the history of manual training in the 

United States, there is no mention of its use in the 

Island kingdom or even after its annexation to the 

United States in 1898.  The objective of this 

article is to fill the gap in curriculum history by 

acknowledging the accomplishments of these 

missionary educators.  In addition, it is this 

author‟s contention that this accomplishment 

should be considered a part of the American 

educational experience for two reasons.  First, 

when Western education arrived in Hawai„i, the 

primary sponsors were American Protestant 

missionaries.  They developed an educational 

system in Hawai„i that mirrored what was being 

used in the United States.  Second, through letters 

(written and received) and subscribing to 

American education publications, or by their 

children‟s presence in the United States, where 

many were educated for their college education, 

the missionary educators shared what they were 

doing and kept abreast with the newest 

educational practices being implemented in the 

United States.  

My research relies on substantial 

evidence, primary and secondary, demonstrating 

that the use of manual training in Hawai„i more 

than mirrored what was taking place in the United 

States, it anticipated and even influenced 

American use of this curricular practice.  

Moreover, it is the intention of this author to 

demonstrate that in using manual training, the 

educators in Hawai„i deserve to be recognized as 

not mere borrowers but innovators.  Most of the 

implementation of manual training in Hawai„i 

was based on local conditions and, as such, 

anticipated on their own some of the same 

elements of this educational system in the United 

States and Europe.   



36 

 

In the 1880s, when a new form of manual 

training curriculum was spreading throughout the 

United States, it made its way to Hawai„i.  This 

version of manual training curriculum was a more 

systematic form.  It had been developed in 

Sweden, Russian, and Finland (Vaughn and Mays 

1924).  While it was called manual training, it 

was meant to supplant earlier uses of this 

curriculum by providing manipulative 

experiences instead of learning just through the 

use of tools.  As will be discussed in the section 

on upgrading manual training in Hawai„i after the 

1880s, educators in Hawai„i were quick to adapt 

the new version by either adding elements to their 

existing use of manual training or in two cases 

(where they established new schools) by 

importing the new manual training curriculum 

wholesale.  While the proponents of this new 

manual training were certainly aware that manual 

training had existed in the United States for a long 

time, they chose to ignore previous uses of 

manual training, which created the perception that 

their version of the manual training curriculum 

was new (Author 2010).  Their version of manual 

training was promoted as the best way to provide 

the general industrial training that would meet the 

rapidly changing demands brought on by 

industrialization (Struck 1930).  Calvin 

Woodward (1890b), one of its supporters, was 

particularly concerned that the usual method of 

education steered students away from 

employment requiring hard labor.  Teaching 

character was an important component of manual 

training, as was the idea that schools provide real-

life experiences and modify student conduct in 

accordance with predetermined aims and ideals 

(Vaughn and Mays 1924).   

After the Hawaiian monarchy was 

overthrown in 1893, Hawai„i was primarily under 

the control of the second-generation missionaries.  

Using the new focus on a more systematized 

manual training, the second-generation 

missionaries involved in education revised and 

implemented this curriculum throughout the 

public schools of Hawai„i.  By the early years of 

the twentieth century and continuing through the 

1920s, it was the preferred curriculum in both the 

private and public schools of Hawai„i.  As a 

result, in terms of length of time and continuity, 

the use of manual training in Hawai„i was more 

preponderant than what was practiced in the 

United States. 

 

Early History of Manual Training Curriculum 

The manual training curriculum was 

widely used by educators in Europe as early as 

the eighteenth century.  Johann Pestalozzi is 

generally credited as being the father of this 

curriculum (Barlow 1967; Bennett 1926; 

Comings 1915; Hall 1973; Keller 1948; Struck 

1930; Vaughn & Mays 1924; Woodward 1890b).  

It was Pestalozzi‟s philosophy of “learning by 

doing” that led him to sponsor a curriculum 

whereby books were supplemental to experience.  

This led him to create a form of instruction, 

which was based upon supplying the mind with 

ideas through both sense perception and 

observation and handling of objects.  Pestalozzi 

contended that children developed mentally 

through impressions and experiences, not through 

words.  According to Charles Bennett (1926), an 

early twentieth century proponent of manual 

training, Pestalozzi “took up the slogan, „back to 

nature,‟ and demanded that objects and activities 

of all sorts be used to train the sense-perceptions, 

believing that all knowledge came through the 

senses” (22-23).  Primarily, Pestalozzi‟s desire to 

develop the manual training curriculum resulted 

as a reaction to the formal study of Latin and 

Greek grammar that predominated as the major 

form of education throughout the eighteenth 

century.  Although this article is about the manual 



37 

 

training system, Pestalozzi advocated both 

manual labor and manual training systems.  The 

manual labor system involved the inclusion of 

working with the hands as part of the curriculum; 

the manual training system involved instruction 

of the hands through the specific use of tools.  

Both systems were often referred to as education 

of the mind and hands.  While other educators 

utilized these systems as a means to prepare 

students for profitable employment, Pestalozzi 

intended that these systems combine their special 

focus with moral and intellectual instruction.  He 

was very aware of the need for education to 

connect to the advances being made by industry; 

nevertheless, he preferred an education where 

industry became a means to providing a general 

education (Barlow 1967).   

The first opportunity to implement 

Pestalozzi‟s ideas on education occurred when 

Philip Emanuel von Fellenberg, an associate of 

Pestalozzi, established two schools in Hofwyl, 

Switzerland.  His experiment elaborated on his 

mentor‟s philosophy by bringing together upper 

and lower class students.  The Academy was 

intended for the sons of rich families; the Farm 

and Trade School provided instruction for poor 

children (Barlow 1967).  While Fellenberg 

provided opportunities for the young people of 

the different social strata to get together, the 

education for each class was different.  Manual 

labor was used as a means to provide physical 

training for his upper class students, and a means 

of paying for instruction and living expenses for 

his lower class students.  The curriculum for the 

upper class students was a classical education; the 

curriculum for the lower class students involved 

using manual training instruction connected to 

agriculture and industry with a common school 

academic education (Keller 1948). 

 

Manual Training in Hawai‘i Prior to the 1880s 

Western education arrived in Hawai„i with 

the advent of missionaries sent by the American 

Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions 

(ABCFM) in 1820.  At first, the American 

missionaries focused on educating adults in order 

to prepare them to accept Christianity and read 

the Bible for themselves.  The missionaries 

preferred to provide an education based upon 

equal opportunity but due to the social structure 

of the Hawaiian culture, education was impacted 

by the students‟ social class.  Thus, in 1831, 

Lahainaluna High School was established as a 

teacher-training center to both resolve the 

dilemma posed by the lack of adequately prepared 

teachers and to provide a school for the sons of 

chiefs.  It was also determined that the school 

would use the manual labor system as far as 

possible.  Thus, education of the mind and hands 

began in Hawai„i (Alexander 1902; Alexander 

and Atkinson 1888; Westervelt 1911).  

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 (Frear 1920).  

In 1833, when the school system for adult 

Hawaiians began to fall apart, the missionaries at 

most of the stations began to create schools for 

adolescents.  Two school systems evolved as the 

missionaries identified the need to remove the 

best adolescents from the common schools to 

special boarding schools.  The rationale to create 

these boarding schools was to provide an 

education for select students under the continuous 

influence of the missionary educators.  This 

decision arose as the result of arguments made by 

Reverends Richard Armstrong and David Lyman 

at the General Meeting of 1835.  Both men 

believed that education needed to be both 

practical and delivered in an isolated environment 

away from the bad influences of other white men 



38 

 

and the Hawaiian culture.  As a result, it was 

agreed to board students at the Hilo School, begin 

a boarding school for girls at Wailuku, Maui, and 

shift from educating adults in a day situation to 

children as boarders at Lahainaluna High School.  

The High School continued to educate members 

of the chiefly class but the best students from 

other schools could finish their education there as 

well (Extracts 1835).  

Initially, all three schools had a common 

school curriculum in addition to using some form 

of manual labor and/or manual training system. 

When Armstrong and Lyman spoke about 

wanting a “practical” education at all the select 

schools, they were referring to using some form 

of education of the mind and hands.  

Consequently, it was hoped that the select schools 

would also implement this meaning of “practical” 

into their curriculum.  Even though the 

curriculum at Lahainaluna High School included 

manual labor, in time its academics became 

formal.  In 1837, mirroring the need to upgrade 

the curriculum of the school by introducing a 

formal school curriculum, the school was 

renamed to be a seminary so that preachers as 

well as teachers could be trained at the school.  

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).  

When an economic depression hit the 

United States in 1839, the ABCFM could no 

longer finance all the endeavors of the Hawaiian 

mission. As a consequence, the Hawaiian 

government was given control over the common 

schools and most of the select schools to form the 

public school system. A few of the select schools, 

which received sufficient financial support and 

boarded students remained independent from the 

public school system and continued to be 

operated by the American missionaries (Extracts 

1835).  Six years later, when the ABCFM could 

no longer afford to finance Lahainaluna 

Seminary, the school was also turned over to the 

public school system.  It continued to be a 

boarding school for the best public school 

students and until 1890 was the only public high 

school in the Kingdom (Lecker 1938). 

Hilo Boys‟ Boarding School was the first 

school in Hawai„i to use the manual training 

curriculum.  This school truly epitomized 

Pestalozzi‟s model as it combined both the 

manual labor and manual training systems in its 

curriculum.  David Beldon Lyman was the 

founder of the school.  He arrived in Hawai„i in 

1832.  Due to being the oldest of eight children 

born to a New England farm family, he was both 

religious and industrious.  He graduated from 

Williams College and from Andover Theological 

Institute, where he experienced manual labor as a 

part of his education.  Within three months after 

the ABCFM selected him, he married Sarah 

Joiner, and headed for Hawai„i.  In 1835, after 

preaching and teaching in the Hilo District, he 

decided it would be best to develop a boarding 

school for young students so that habits of 

Christianity and industry might be inculcated at 

an early age (Missionary album 1969; Gordon 

1936).  Mildred Gordon (1936) says he “was very 

practical, reserved in personality, a good farmer 

and carpenter who enjoyed seeing the practical 

results of his work” (18).   His upbringing, 

education, and experiences led him to fit 

education to the ability of his students.  For over 

fifty years under his leadership, Hilo Boarding 

School proved to be unique, not only in Hawai„i, 

but worldwide; it was an early innovator in 

preparing students for a trade, in making the 

training of the hands as important as the training 

of the mind, and in introducing music as an 

important and natural part of school work 

(Gordon 1936). 



39 

 

  The objective of Hilo Boys‟ Boarding 

School was to take commoner males and prepare 

them to be good teachers and preachers with both 

piety and good character.  A pamphlet on the Hilo 

Boarding School summarized its mission:  

 

It aimed to take Hawaiian youth in their 

natural uncultured state and by dint of 

unsparing painstaking effort to impart to 

them such mental and moral furnishing 

as they were able to receive and 

appropriate in combination with a 

wholesome physical training in the ways 

of social and civilized life (Hilo 

Boarding 1911, 8). 

 

Throughout the entire history of the school, the 

manual labor and manual training curricula 

played a prominent role.  Agriculture was 

included in the curriculum from the beginning to 

help the school be self-sufficient.  The boys‟ 

involvement in raising their own food cut down 

on the expenses of the school, which often led to 

the school making money (Oleson 1911).  But it 

was also believed that laboring in the fields was 

good education for the students.  The argument 

for manual labor was “that such work was 

valuable not only for the health of the students, 

but contributed to the good discipline of the 

school, as well as being valuable in forming 

habits of thrift and industry” (Gordon 1936, 61).  

The curriculum kept the boys busy from morning 

until night (Lyman 1902).   

Due to Lyman‟s ingenuity, the school 

acquired tools and instituted a form of manual 

training that involved designing and using tools to 

complete a project.  Using tools to tend the farm 

at the school was the primary means to teach the 

boys how to use tools but eventually other manual 

training skills were added.  In 1840 and 1844, 

tailoring and dairying were added to the 

curriculum.  The school struggled financially after 

1850, when the ABCFM withdrew its financial 

support (Terry 1911).  An all-around training 

much like growing up on a farm was developed in 

order to compensate for the lack of funds to 

acquire machines and tools.  This was 

accomplished through short courses offered by 

the Home Crafts Department, a curriculum 

entirely distinct from the school‟s manual labor 

courses.  It included training in knot-making and 

splicing of ropes, window glazing, soldering, 

general repair work, care of horses, wagons and 

farm implements, leather work, sharpening tools, 

concrete work, laying water pipes, repairing 

faucets, and installing and repairing electrical 

lines (Lyman 1920).  

The curriculum at the Hilo school had an 

impact on American education as early as the 

1860s.  The system to which the Lyman‟s 

combined manual labor and manual training into 

the curriculum at the Hilo school influenced the 

way Samuel Chapman Armstrong approached 

industrial education at Hampton Institute (Author 

2007).   Armstrong was born in Hawai„i to the 

missionary couple, Reverend Richard and 

Clarissa Chapman Armstrong.  His education and 

experience in Hawai„i prepared him for the work 

he implemented at Hampton Institute primarily 

because he had firsthand experience with the Hilo 

school as his father‟s secretary.  Richard 

Armstrong was the Minister of Public Instruction 

and Samuel kept the records for his father‟s 

observations during the official tours of the 

various schools of the Islands.  Edith Talbot 

(1904), a biographer of Samuel Armstrong, stated 

that among all the schools he observed, the work 

being done by Reverend Lyman at Hilo Boys‟ 

Boarding School impressed him the most.  In 

practice, the manual labor and manual training 

system at Hampton Institute was much like what 

Lyman had instituted at the Hilo Boys‟ Boarding 

School; it used manual labor to give students a 



40 

 

chance to meet bills for board and clothing, to 

develop high standards of discipline, and to 

enhance students‟ energy level. This system also 

helped students meet the mental rigors of the 

curriculum (Armstrong and Ludlow 1874).  

Lahainaluna Seminary and Hilo Boys‟ 

Boarding Schools were not the only schools using 

some form of education of the mind and hands 

before the 1880s.  The boys‟ schools at Waialua 

on the island of Oahu, Kohala on the island of 

Hawai„i, and Waioli on the island of Kauai were 

select schools whose founders continued to 

operate independently of the public school system 

with little support from the ABCFM (Report of 

Kohala 1865-1870; Report of Waioli 1861).  

Their education mirrored that of Hilo Boys‟ 

Boarding School since they used a common 

school academic curriculum along with education 

of the mind and hands.  However, while they 

developed the same reliance on the manual labor 

system as the Hilo school, they did not acquire 

the tools and machinery necessary to incorporate 

the manual training system (Cheever 1856).  

In addition, early in the promotion of 

select schools, there were two female schools that 

used the manual labor curriculum similar to what 

was practiced at the boys‟ schools: Wailuku 

Female Seminary and Hilo Girls‟ School; 

founded in 1835 and 1838 respectively (Coan 

1840; Extracts 1836; Kleinberg 1990; Piercy 

1992).  Even though both schools were closed by 

1850, beginning in the 1860s, four new female 

seminaries were established: Waialua and 

Kawaiahao on the island of Oahu, Kohala on the 

island of Hawai„i, and Maunaolu on the island of 

Maui.  At this time the original Sandwich Island 

Mission, which was headquartered in Boston, was 

replaced by the Hawaiian Evangelical Association 

(HEA).  Under this new organization, female 

seminaries were promoted based upon the model 

being used in the United States.  The instruction 

at these American female seminaries tended to be 

learning by doing in connection with practical arts 

of the household.  Very often the schools included 

manual labor as a means to inculcate 

industriousness and to help defray the expenses of 

the school and/or the students.  By the time the 

Hawaiian female seminaries were founded, 

American female seminaries were utilizing 

manual training in their curriculum as well 

(Author 2003).   

The first female seminary to be 

established was the Ka‟u Seminary located on the 

island of Hawai‟i.  Because of the isolated 

location of the seminary, it was difficult to attract 

many students to the school.  As a consequence, 

tuition and board was free, as long as the girls 

were placed under the parental care of the 

teachers of the school until the girls were married 

or obtained employment (Annual Reports 1863; 

Female Boarding 1871).  After struggling to fill 

the school, in 1865, the HEA decided to 

transplant the school to Waialua, Oahu.  The 

school was designed to provide training, 

according to an instructor at the school, “to fit 

them [the girls] for missionaries and teachers, and 

to be the mothers of a part of the future redeemed 

Hawaiian nation” (Jones 1880, 436).  The 

curriculum included geography, arithmetic, 

surveying, astronomy, singing, Bible history, and 

the Bible in general.  Manual training consisted of 

instruction in cutting and sewing dresses, in 

washing, ironing, cooking, cleaning house, and 

painting (Report of Education 1866).  

Based upon a report of the Education 

Committee of the HEA on the need for a female 

seminary in Honolulu, Kawaiahao Female 

Seminary was established in 1861.  The authors 

of this report wanted this school to be primarily 

religious, a boarding school with a day school 

department, taught in both English and Hawaiian 

languages, supported by tuition paid by parents or 



41 

 

guardians of the students, and be a manual 

training school in order that the girls be trained 

and practice in all that pertains to housekeeping 

and the domestic arts (Report of Education 1866).  

Due to its location in Honolulu, private citizens, 

the ABCFM, the HEA, and the Hawaiian Mission 

Children‟s Society (HMCS) poured more money 

into the school.  The Hawaiian Mission 

Children‟s Society had just been created to 

formalize the existence of the missionary faction 

(Hawaiian Mission 1854). New buildings were 

constructed, enabling the school to offer an 

industrial education program and increase its 

enrollment.  Between 1881 and the end of the 

century, the enrollment grew from 57 to 127 

students (Kawaiahao Seminary 1885).  

Originally, Kawaiahao Seminary was both a day 

and boarding school but from 1871 on, it became 

an exclusively a boarding school.  At first the 

school was designed to prepare Hawaiian girls to 

become “suitable” wives for men who were at the 

same time preparing to become missionaries and 

work in the South Seas.  This objective took the 

back seat to industrial education as new industrial 

departments were added.  This included sewing, 

washing and ironing, dressmaking, domestic arts, 

and nursing.  The mainstay of the curriculum 

involved furnishing complete elementary courses, 

including music, both vocal and instrumental, and 

training in the household arts (Chamberlain 

1889).   

The third female seminary for Hawaiians 

was established in Kohala on the west side of the 

island of Hawai„i.  Originally, Reverend Elias 

Bond and his wife, Ellen Howell Bond, had 

founded both boys‟ and girls‟ boarding schools in 

Kohala during the 1840s.  But due to the 

pressures of other work, they were both forced to 

close their respective schools (Missionary album 

1969; Piercy 1992).  When the Kohala Female 

Seminary was re-opened in the 1860s, the aims 

and ideals of the school was to “furnish a 

wholesome Christian home training, together with 

a practical education such as will fit the girls to 

become housekeepers, wage earners, and 

generally good citizens” (K. Bond 1954, 1).  The 

girls were allowed to do work in lieu of the 

tuition and room and board fees, which also 

minimized the costs for the school.  The tuition 

was $25 per semester throughout the nineteenth 

century.  This involved washing and ironing 

clothes, cooking, baking taro twice a week, and 

raising the potatoes, taro, and other vegetables.  

The curriculum included arithmetic, history, 

language, geography, reading, spelling, civics, 

and the Bible.  The industrial program included 

lauhala mat weaving, sewing, cooking, crafts, 

music, hygiene, and gymnastics (E. Bond 1923; 

K. Bond 1954).  The graduates of the Kohala 

Female Seminary were preferred as employees by 

the manager of Parker Ranch, which once was the 

largest singly owned ranch in the United States 

(Williams 1923).   

The last of the female seminaries that was 

begun by the missionaries was at first called the 

Makawao Family School.  Reverend Claudius B. 

Andrews and his wife, Anne Seward Gilson 

Andrews, began it in 1861 in a location above 

Makawao Village on the island of Maui.  When 

the site was changed, the school was renamed to 

be the Maunaolu Female Seminary.  The founders 

wanted to create a school where the girls were 

taught as if they were their own daughters.  

Throughout the years, the curriculum included the 

usual academic courses in reading, mathematics, 

literature, history, language (all instruction was in 

English), geography, spelling, civics, and the 

Bible.  The industrial departments included 

sewing, domestic arts, and culinary.  During the 

last two decades of the nineteenth century, the 

school was nicknamed the Mt. Holyoke Seminary 

of the Hawaiian Islands due to the connection of 



42 

 

its instructors with that American seminary and 

the large number of Hawaiian minister‟s 

daughters in attendance (Turner 1929).   

While the educators at these missionary 

schools were heavily involved in some aspect of 

education of the mind and hands, the public schools 

were primarily involved in training their students 

just to be literate.  After 1850, as few Hawaiians 

were acquiring parcels of land under the Māhele 

land division, missionary and Hawaiian leaders 

agreed that in order to help Hawaiians become self-

sufficient, independent, and economically 

successful, they also needed to be educated in the 

skills of agriculture and industry.  In the Annual 

Reports of the HEA for 1855, the missionaries 

spelled out their understanding of the importance of 

teaching them industrial skills: 

  

The connexion [sic] therefore between 

our schools and labor is most intimate 

and important.  The two must go 

together. It is too often the case…that 

our native youth, both male and female, 

acquire some intelligence at school, and 

then at the age of fourteen or fifteen 

leave school only to live in idleness and 

vice. What is wanted is to introduce 

them to the useful trades; to induce them 

to engage in the cultivation of the soil, or 

some branch of regular and useful labor 

(5).  

 

As a result, beginning in the 1850s, through 

successive Presidents of the Kingdom‟s Board of 

Education (a position that replaced the previous 

Minister of Public Instruction), manual labor and 

manual training was slowly infused into public 

school education.  Due to the efforts being 

contingent on the availability of funding the 

results varied from school to school. 

 

Manual Training Comes to Hawai‘i in 

1880s 

Coinciding with the advent of the new 

form of manual training spreading throughout the 

United States, the missionary educators shifted 

from combining manual labor with manual 

training to strictly using the manual training 

system.  All the missionary female seminaries 

expanded their use of industrial departments 

(Author 2003).  Probably because they were 

incapable of making the transition, Kohala and 

Waioli Boys‟ School were released to join the 

other government English select schools (Report 

of Kohala 1865-1870; Report of Waioli 1861). 

Waialua Boys‟ School had closed in 1845 

(Armstrong 1846).  

Upon the selection of Reverend William 

Oleson to become principal of the Hilo Boys‟ 

Boarding School, a more systematic version of 

manual training began to replace the previous 

curriculum.  Oleson was the first new missionary 

recruited to Hawai„i in nearly 30 years.  He was 

selected because he was knowledgeable of the 

manual training curriculum beginning to take 

hold in the United States.  During his tenure as 

principal (1879-1887), the school began a new 

era.  Under his leadership the endowment fund 

was increased, new industrial courses were added, 

and the first major new education building in 10 

years was erected (Gordon 1936).   

During the latter two decades of the 

nineteenth century, as the missionaries began to 

pursue a more systematic form of manual 

training, Hilo Boarding School truly became an 

industrial school.  In 1886, William W. Hall gave 

the school carpenter tools.  A year later, a printing 

press and a wood lathe were donated and the 

government appropriated $1,500 for an industrial 

arts building.  In 1890, funds for a blacksmith 

shop and three sewing machines were acquired.  

In 1892, Charles C. Kennedy donated a steam 

boiler and another party donated an engine lathe.  

That same year a fifteen light dynamo was 



43 

 

purchased for lighting, making the school 

buildings the first to have lights in all of Hilo.  In 

1894, the school started an ice plant.  In 1895, the 

school added a coffee huller and pulper.  Finally, 

after years of farming done entirely by hand, a 

plow and mower were purchased (Gordon 1936).  

Gordon (1936) highlights the advances that Hilo 

Boarding School promoted and the good it 

provided for Hilo: 

 

In many ways the Hilo Boarding School 

was the advance guard for new 

industries in the community, such as 

printing, the making of ice, dairying, and 

the manufacture of electricity.  The boys 

trained to take part in these new 

industries.  When the community could 

take over an industry as a regular 

business enterprise, the school 

relinquished the project as a community 

enterprise (59).   

 

Expanding Manual Training after the 1880s 

During the last decade of the nineteenth 

century, manual training spread from its base at 

Hilo Boys‟ Boarding School to encompass two 

new manual training schools for boys and the 

spread of this form of curriculum to the public 

schools.  The first effort in the diffusion of 

manual training was the establishment of the 

Kamehameha School for Boys.   

Bernice Pauahi Bishop, heir to the vast 

lands of the Kamehameha dynasty, before her 

death in 1884, established through her will the 

design to create two private schools, one for boys 

and one for girls.  The students were to be 

Hawaiians by preference.  Instruction was to be in 

English.  As per her wishes, the course of study 

required several hours of manual labor every day 

(Kamehameha‟s memorial 1895).  The schools 

were considered an extension of the education 

work being done by the missionaries because 

most of the people connected with it were 

members of the missionary faction, including its 

founders, board of directors, first president, and 

first and second principals.  Reverend Oleson was 

recruited from the Hilo Boys‟ Boarding School to 

serve as the school‟s first principal.  His first 

assignment was to study current educational 

methods in the United States, particularly those 

used at Hampton Institute (Kamehameha‟s 

memorial 1895).  Due to the connection to which 

Samuel Armstrong maintained with educators in 

Hawai„i, he was asked to recruit staff members 

for the school.  He discovered Theodore Richards 

at Camp Chocarun for Boys in New Hampshire.  

Richards would later become the second principal 

of the Kamehameha Boys‟ School (Thompson 

1922).  Calvin Woodward, one of the proponents 

of the new manual training in the United States 

was also involved in helping provide teachers as 

indicated by a letter exchanged between him and  

Armstrong (Woodward 1890a). 

The school was commonly known as the 

Manual Department or “The Manual” due to its 

adherence to the manual training system.  Several 

of the boys came over from Hilo Boarding School 

with their principal to provide a nucleus of boys 

familiar with his program.  The academic 

department offered a common school curriculum, 

with special emphasis on language training.  The 

six-year program included written and mental 

drill in arithmetic, algebra and geometry, 

language exercises in dictation, original 

composition, oral and written use of idioms, 

synonyms, business forms, orders, bills, and 

accounts.  Other academic pursuits included 

physical geography, historical narratives, reading, 

and penmanship.  There was also an emphasis on 

moral instruction.  The industrial programs 

included free-hand drawing and designing, 

mechanical drawing, source and manufacture of 

useful articles, and machine use.  In addition, 



44 

 

daily instruction was given in vocal music.  

Finally, the manual training department furnished 

a complete course of instruction in carpentry, 

black-smithing, piping, wood turning, and press 

work (Thompson 1892, 1893).  Later, the school 

added a Normal Department due to the need for 

preparing Hawaiian teachers for positions in 

country districts where the need for teachers was 

the greatest (Thompson 1895).   

The Kamehameha Girls‟ School was 

begun in 1894, seven years after the Boys‟ School 

was established.  It was not technically a 

seminary or founded by missionaries, but all the 

girls enrolled were Hawaiian, and its curriculum 

was very similar to what was used at the 

missionary sponsored seminaries (Hudson 1935).  

At the end of the century, all the female 

seminaries began to lose students to the newly 

founded Kamehameha School for Girls.  

 At about the same time that the 

Kamehameha School for Boys was being 

established, second-generation missionaries were 

planning the Kauai Industrial School.  This school 

was originally conceived as a coeducational 

industrial school, near the city of Lihue, on the 

island of Kauai, because this island did not have 

any school providing an industrial education like 

the rest of the major islands.  Second-generation 

missionaries, Juliette Smith and her brother Jared 

Smith, were the founders of the school (Statement 

of Kauai 1900).   

The school was to be built on 30 acres of 

land suitable for agriculture and housing 75 

pupils.  The staff was to include the principal, two 

teachers, a matron, and a superintendent of 

Manual and Mechanical Shop.  Benefactors paid 

the salary of the teachers.  Tuition for the students 

was 25 dollars per year (Report of Kauai 1900).   

The curriculum included the boys working in the 

schoolroom for five hours each day; one and a 

half hours were spent in the shop and three and 

one half hours were spent working on the 

grounds.  The latter time was spent chiefly in 

raising sweet potatoes, bananas, papayas, and 

sorghum.  The main mechanical industries were 

blacksmithing and carpentry.  By 1891, the school 

followed a more detailed curriculum for the three 

years enrolled.  Each year students took courses 

in English, arithmetic, music, and recitations.  

The First Year added courses in physics and 

algebra, the Second Year added courses in 

printing and physiology, and the Third Year 

added a course in physiology.  After school, all 

classes participated in baseball, croquet, or tennis 

(Smith 1889).  Due to economic hardships to the 

sugar planters, the main philanthropists funding 

the school, and Jared Smith‟s death in 1898, the 

school closed in 1899 (Alexander 1898). 

When the monarchy was overthrown in 

1893, second-generation missionaries gained 

ultimate political power and as a result more 

members of the missionary faction became 

administrators and teachers in the public schools.  

Having learned the value of the manual training 

curriculum for educating Hawaiians throughout 

the nineteenth century, the second-generation 

missionary educators began to introduce a 

required manual training curriculum into the 

public schools as well.  In 1894, William R. 

Castle became the first missionary son to serve as 

President of the Board of Education.  In his report 

for that year, he discussed the effort to introduce 

manual training skills into the public schools 

without the acquisition of expensive tools and 

machinery (Castle 1894).  By 1898, the Minister 

of Public Instruction (the Republic of Hawai„i 

officials changed the title of the education 

position back to what it had been before 1860), 

William D. Alexander (another missionary son), 

directed the public schools to follow a more 

extensive curriculum for manual training.  He 

developed a curriculum for all students to receive 



45 

 

manual training from fourth through eighth 

grades.  Similar to Castle, he preferred the course 

work of manual training, rather than a full-blown 

manual training program as was being followed at 

the female seminaries, Hilo Boys‟ Boarding 

School, the Kamehameha Schools, and Kauai 

Industrial School.  This curriculum involved 

Hawaiian male students making and using 

weather vanes, seed envelopes, and agricultural 

tools and Hawaiian female students weaving 

baskets and sewing clothing.  The purpose of the 

curriculum was to prepare its pupils for industrial 

or agricultural occupations (Alexander 1898).   

The best example of missionary adherence 

to the manual training curriculum was the 

conversion of Lahainaluna Seminary from a 

formal school into a manual training school like 

the Kamehameha School for Boys.  When the 

second-generation missionaries took control of 

the public schools, manual training was 

introduced at Lahainaluna Seminary.  In 1899, 

William D. Alexander pronounced that the school 

was a manual training school.  Money was 

appropriated to re-build the school since the 

original buildings were in disrepair and to 

construct the necessary shops to provide a top-

notch manual training program.  The new 

buildings were dedicated in 1904, and the school 

was officially re-named as Lahainaluna Technical 

High School.  The once formal curriculum of the 

school was altered to include courses in 

bookkeeping, typewriting, mechanical and 

architectural drawings, sanitation and civics, 

commercial arithmetic and business English.  

Charles MacDonald, the principal of the school, 

stated, “the object of the manual training was to 

fit the lads to earn a living in the conditions 

obtaining in Hawai„i” (MacDonald 1931, 44).  

Alatau Atkinson (1905), one time Inspector 

General of the public schools, best exemplified 

the alteration of the training when he delivered 

the address at the formal opening of Lahainaluna 

Technical High School in 1904: 

 

Lahainaluna is essentially the training 

place for the poor man….To train a man 

we must not merely train his intellect, 

we must train his hand with equal care. 

We must make him understand the 

dignity of labor.  We must teach him not 

theoretically, we must teach him 

practically (2-3). 

 

Conclusion 

This study establishes the important role 

played by missionary educators in Hawai„i in 

using the manual training curriculum.  It should 

be quite apparent from this study that due to 

utilizing the manual training curriculum 

continuously over a long period of time the 

missionary educators in Hawai„i should be 

accorded a primary place in the history of this 

curriculum both in Hawai„i and the United States.   

Even when the manual training system was 

replaced in the public schools with vocational 

education and the female seminaries converted 

their curriculum to the academics of a private 

high school in the 1920s, Kamehameha Schools, 

Hilo Boys‟ Boarding School, and the Lahainaluna 

Technical High School continued to utilized 

manual training well into the 1960s.   

One of the most vital elements of this 

evidence is the fact that Samuel Chapman 

Armstrong borrowed his initial ideas for his 

industrial education system at Hampton Institute 

from the Hilo model.  What was practiced at the 

Hilo school and designed by Reverend David 

Lyman in the1830s was unique in comparison to 

what was being done at this time in the United 

States.  Until Hampton Institute was begun in 

1865, no other experiments in the United States 

even came close to matching the work being 

accomplished at Hilo Boys‟ Boarding School.  In 



46 

 

addition, the symbiotic relationship of preparing 

the best students at the Hilo school to be further 

trained at Lahainaluna Seminary was also unique 

in comparison to what was being done at this time 

in the United States.  In fact, it was more like 

what Fellenberg had introduced in Hofwyl, 

Switzerland.  The experiments with manual labor, 

manual training, and a common school 

curriculum at Hilo Boys‟ Boarding School for 

commoner students (equivalent to the lower class) 

and the experiments with manual labor and a 

formal curriculum at Lahainaluna Seminary for 

the sons of chiefs (equivalent to the upper class) 

mirrored Fellenberg‟s schools for the lower and 

upper classes.  Furthermore, Lahainaluna 

Seminary was like academies in the United States 

where formal education was combined with a 

manual labor system to train its brightest 

members to serve as missionaries. While the 

female seminaries for Hawaiian girls were not 

unique to Hawai„i, the efforts by missionary 

educators in Hawai„i served as another example 

of how they learned and modified what was 

taking place elsewhere to meet the educational 

needs of their Hawaiian students. 

Manual training arrived in Hawai„i many 

years before it began to spread throughout the 

United States in the 1880s.  However, the new 

version of manual training arrived in Hawai„i at 

about the same time that it was being promoted in 

the United States.  The systematizing of manual 

training at Hilo Boys‟ Boarding School, the 

establishment of manual training at both the 

Kamehameha School for Boys and the Kauai 

Industrial School, the addition of manual training 

departments at the female seminaries and the 

Kamehameha School for Girls, the shift in 

curriculum that led to formation of the 

Lahainaluna Technical High School, and the 

introduction of manual training into the public 

schools are examples of this diffusion.  Through 

all these efforts, the educators borrowed ideas 

solicited by reading literature, visiting schools, or 

communicating with the practitioners of manual 

training in the United States.   

Compared to most school systems in 

America, the program in the Islands was 

implementing a more extensive use of manual 

training.  Even when some American school 

districts were committed to manual training, at 

most, they only had one high school offering that 

curriculum.  During the early years of the 

twentieth century, Hawai„i could claim six 

manual training private schools: two male schools 

(Kamehameha School for Boys and the Hilo 

Boys‟ Boarding School) and four female schools 

(Kawaiahao, Kohala, and Maunaolu Female 

Seminaries and the Kamehameha School for 

Girls).  The Kamehameha Schools were the best 

financed and made the most extensive use of the 

manual training model current in the United 

States.  It is apparent how more advanced this 

curricular practice was in Hawai„i when 

Lahainaluna Technical High School, a public 

school, is added to the six private schools, and 

one takes into account the required teaching of 

manual training skills to all students in the public 

schools of the Territory of Hawai„i.   

 

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