The Oahu College at the Sandwich IslandsPunahou School
History
The Oahu College at the Sandwich Islands
Punahou School
Education -- Hawaii -- History; Punahou School -- History -- 19th century
The Oahu College is open to natives speaking the English language; but
it is especially designed for pupils from that increasing and important
portion of the Hawaiian community, which is of foreign origin. This of
course includes those who have heretofore constituted the mission.
These, with their families, must be regarded as in the highest degree
essential to the religious welfare of the Islands. Their children, now
at the Islands in a course of education, not including those too young
for school, nor those in the colleges and schools of the United States,
number one hundred and forty-five. To remove even a considerable portion
of these for education to the United States, would be at great expense
and inconvenience, and there is a growing conviction among the parents,
that their children must be chiefly educated there. "They can there,"
says one of the most experienced of the parents, "be under parental
guardianship and home influences; and this will help to retain both
parents and children in the field. The education will be less perfect
than in the United States, but it will fit them better, in some
respects, to labor in the land of their birth, than an education in a
foreign country. The parents will seek an education for their children
elsewhere, if it be not provided for them at the Islands; but it is
believed that most of them will retain their children there, if a
college be there provided."
The number of foreign residents and their descendants is increasing at
the Sandwich Islands. An intelligent glance at the future will show,
that this enterprising community is destined to exert a very commanding
influence in that increasingly important part of the world, and that the
necessity of its being well educated cannot be over-estimated. The
foreign community now springing up at the Sandwich Islands will
inevitably shape the character and destiny of the whole northern
Pacific. The missionary part of this community has now the vantage
ground as regards all good influences, and with the divine blessing is
able to mould the literary and religious institutions of the Hawaiian
nation. Religion, just now, has a strong hold on those Islands. The
present is, therefore, a favorable time to institute a College, and put
it into a working condition.
The necessity for an institution, such as it is proposed to make of the
_Oahu College_, is one of the most obvious and interesting facts now
presented to our view in that part of the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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