Asking the right questions

In a recent MidWeek article, Bob Jones wrote:

“Somebody surely will ask: Why are we spending $28 million in state money for the College of Hawaiian Language building at UH Hilo?”

I read that question as “Bob Jones asks,” since he is the one crafting the question, while walking away from taking responsibility for it.

He is missing the point. The state is not spending $28 million on a “building,” but is investing in a school with a proven track record of good education – education that serves the entire community, as well as a global community of scholars, community members, families, parents and students.

The “building” does not just benefit some obscure Hawaiian language program in Hilo. In addition to being an integral part of a network of local schools, the school of Hawaiian Language and Hawaiian Studies has helped re-shape the contours and possibilities of language immersion and revitalization programs in the United States and around the world. The Ph.D., for example, is in “Indigenous Language and Culture Revitalization,” which is not focused solely on Hawaiian, or even Hawai’i.

Its B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. programs enable the school to more efficiently host scholars, students and dignitaries from around the world, something it already does although it lacks adequate facilities.

Five years ago, I coordinated a visit of the Wampanoag Language Revitalization Program (WLRP) to visit Hawaiian language schools. The Wampanoag people are the ones the Pilgrims encountered at Plymouth. Now, after seven generations without native speakers, the Wampanaoag are building their first language school.

Here in Hawai‘i they observed classes at Pūnana Leo ‘o Honolulu and in people’s homes, and visited with prominent Hawaiian language professors from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. One of our most important visits was with the faculty, staff and students at UH Hilo’s Hawaiian Language program. 

Hawai‘i has been an important source of strength and support for WLRP. I recently participated in a 4 a.m. conference call with the Board of its very first immersion school. I listened to horrible performance statistics of the public schools in their area, and heard about the high attrition rates for native students, the higher degree to which they are put in detention and are cited for misconduct, etc. I couldn’t help but think about Hawai‘i’s children and ailing public school system.

I did not hear talk about an ethnically based, Wampanoag-only school. What I heard were questions about outreach to different communities in the area, including a growing community of workers from Brazil who speak Portuguese as a first language.

Perhaps Bob Jones missed the point. A Hawaiian language education is not only about language, or “caring about Hawaiians.” It is about providing a solid foundation for children and adults to succeed.

Jones asks the same question that many of our parents ask: “What kine job you going get with that degree?” He writes that society can’t just turn out “thinkers.”

Shall we blame the school for educating our children?

As a professor who teaches U.S. and Hawaiian History, I train students who go on to get degrees in law, education, public policy, health, social work, library science, resource and land management. Some of my student advisees are Hawaiian, and some are not.

Does training people to think make them unfit for the workforce? I’m going to go out on a limb and say, “I’m almost positive it doesn’t.”

Perhaps some of these thinkers, with degrees in Hawaiian language, literature, education, and indigenous language revitalization, will lead the way in shaping our future. Maybe some will engender a more complex economy that provides meaningful service, to each other and the lands we live on, rather than merely “job” opportunities; an economy beyond the old faithful engines of the tourist industry and the military. Perhaps they will have more opportunities and see home as a place to leave but then return to; a global cosmopolitan way of being in the world that overcomes the petty smallness of the worst parts of “local” culture.

A well-known Hawaiian proverb says, “I ka ‘ōlelo no ke ola, i ka ‘ōlelo no ka make.” “In words there is life; in words, death.” Jones’s off-the-cuff remarks about language not being important because “time has proven that newcomers have subsumed languages and cultures” suggests that neglect and disregard for Hawaiian programs and language, Hawaiian culture, and perhaps even Hawaiian people is okay, and perhaps even to be expected.

That Jones can write and publish such a piece shows that Hawaiian programs still have their work cut out for them –  to educate children away from the prejudices and hatred of the generations that came before, mine included.

Don’t take my word for it. Look at some of the dreadful comments that Jones’s essay inspired with his words.

(Also, a correction: Kalena Silva, Ph.D., is not a “cultural adviser,” but a distinguished Professor of Hawaiian language and Hawaiian Studies.)