Kamehameha schools preserve Native Hawaiian culture

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Kamehameha Schools, Maui campus located in Pukalani, Maui. (Photo credit: Kamehameha Schools)

While conducting research for my book Chalkboard Champions, I learned a great deal about numerous types of schools that I had never heard about in my thirty-odd years as an educator. Industrial schools, emancipation schools, farm schools, normal schools, specialist schools. Where were all these terms when I went through student teaching? One type of school I learned about that I found particularly intriguing is the Kamehameha School located in the beautiful state of Hawaii.
Kamehameha Schools were first established in 1887 at the bequest of Bernice Bishop, also known as Princess Pauahi, a member of the Hawaiian royal family when the state was still a territory. Princess Pauahi and her beloved husband, an American named Charles Reed Bishop, had no children of their own, and so when she passed away in 1882 at the age of 52, she directed that her vast estate should be used to benefit and educate underprivileged Native Hawaiian children. Two schools were built: one for boys and one for girls. Eventually the two schools were merged to form a co-ed school, now located on a six-hundred-acre campus on the main island of Oahu overlooking Honolulu Harbor. Other branches of the school have been built on neighboring Hawaiian islands.
Kamehameha Schools serve the important function of preserving Native Hawaiian culture, history, and language. One of the ways this is done is through the annual choral competition known as the Kamehameha Song Contest, where traditional Hawaiian songs and dances as well as new compositions in the genre are performed by the students. This is a wonderful tradition that goes back 45 years.
When I think of Chalkboard Champions, my first thought is of teachers, of course, but individuals such as Princess Pauahi who support schools financially and with their volunteer hours are also heroes to our students!

Read more about Kamehameha Schools in my book Chalkboard Champions, available on amazon.

US suffrage schools helped to win the vote for women

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Educator and suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt established suffrage schools that helped women in the United States earn the right to vote.

When I read about remarkable teachers, I often come across terms that describe varieties of schools I have never heard of before. One such example is the term “suffrage schools.” These schools were first developed in 1917 by suffragette Carrie Chapman Catt, a trained and experienced teacher. Her purpose in establishing theses schools was to train women volunteers to become politically effective in their efforts to win the vote for women.
For the suffrage schools, Carrie developed innovative courses that focused on theories of government, political institutions, and practical applications. She also encouraged women to study state laws, identifying those that were unfair to women, and working to change them. The curriculum also included such topics as public speaking, the organization of the US government, the history of the suffrage movement, how to develop a good relationship with the press, and how to use the press for influencing the electorate. Eventually the lessons taught in these schools paid off, for women won the right to vote with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in 1919.
You can read more about Carrie Chapman Catt and her suffrage schools in my second book, Chalkboard Heroes, available on amazon.

Emancipation schools educated newly freed African Americans

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Emancipation schools were organized by the US Freedman’s Bureau to educate newly freed African Americans. (Photo credit: New Georgia encyclopedia)

When enslaved African Americans were finally freed by the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, an entire group of people who had been previously been denied the opportunity to go to school were suddenly in need of education. (Before the Civil War, it had been declared illegal to teach a slave to read and write in many Southern states.) The schools that were created to meet this need were referred to as emancipation schools.

The United States government and the African American community realized that education was critical to advancement as free individuals in society. It wasn’t just the children, individuals in every age group from grandparents to toddlers needed educational opportunities, and they needed these opportunities right away.

The need was met in a variety of ways. Many intrepid educators from the North traveled to the South to establish schools under the auspices of northern aid societies. These educators were both liberal-minded, abolitionist white teachers and civic-minded, educated Black teachers. Some African Americans were offered educational opportunities in schools created by the army during the Civil War. In these schools, Black soldiers could learn to read and write through the army. In addition, the US government established the Freedmen’s Bureau, and this department was responsible for organizing many educational opportunities for newly freed slaves.

For a more informative discussion about emancipation schools, see this link to the American Experience.

 

Industrial schools educated abandoned, orphaned children

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Ohio Reform Farm, also known as Boys Industrial School, established in 1857.  (Photo credit: Grandview Heights/Marble Cliff historical Society)

Many times while I am reading biographies about remarkable teachers or conducting other research, I come across a description of a type of school that I am unfamiliar with. I always enjoy learning about various types of schools, and I am eager to share my newly-acquired knowledge with others.

One school I have been reading about is the industrial school. An industrial school was an institution commonly established around the turn of the twentieth century. Although these schools were popular way back in history, they are not unheard of today.
An industrial school is a boarding school that provided for the children’s basic needs for housing, food, and medical care. Often these schools were established to provide a means for caring for children who had been orphaned, neglected, or abandoned. Sometimes these institutions provided for those youngsters who were deemed incorrigible.
Today, these children are typically cared for through adoption or placement in foster homes, and they are educated in regular public schools. But in the past century, industrial schools served a valuable service for these needy kids.
In the industrial school, students were taught vocational skills that would allow them to seek gainful employment once they came of age. Girls typically received training in the domestic arts or needle trades, and boys were taught vocational skills such as carpentry, shoe-making, or box-making. In addition, the young people were taught fundamental literacy skills in such subjects as reading, writing, and mathematics.
You can read more about various industrial schools in my book, Chalkboard Champions, available from amazon.

The normal school: A place to train Chalkboard Champions

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Framingham University, the first state supported normal school where future teachers were trained in pedagogy and curriculum design.

As I conduct my research about the numerous talented and dedicated Chalkboard Champions in American history, I sometimes come across terms that describe institutions of learning that were unfamiliar to me before I did my research. This was the case when I first came across the term “normal school.”

From my study, I learned that a normal school is an educational institution which provided training for high school graduates who had decided to become teachers. Today, these institutions are typically called “teachers’ colleges.” Much like teacher training colleges today, the original normal schools offered advanced courses in subjects that teachers would be expected to teach to their students. The school also provided instruction on how to organize and present lessons, what today we would call pedagogy and curriculum design. The term “normal school” derived from the intention of establishing teaching standards or norms.

The first public normal school in the United States was founded in 1823 by Samuel Read Hall in Concord, Vermont. Samuel Read Hall was an educator who, while serving as a headmaster of an academy, quickly discerned that the teachers in his employ needed to normalize or standardize their base of knowledge and their instructional practices. And so the first normal school in the United States was formed, based on models already founded in France and Germany.

The first state-sponsored normal school was established in 1839 in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in 1839. That educational institution later became Framingham State University, and is depicted in the sketch above.

Originally, both public and private normal schools offered a two-year course beyond the high school level, but in the 20th century, teacher training requirements were extended to a minimum of four years.

To read more about normal schools, see this link to the New World Encyclopedia