The political process of institutionalizing educational policy and its impact on life choices of an indigenous people: the case of Native Hawaiians, 1890‐1900

Abstract

This article focuses on a ten‐year period of political turbulence in Hawaii to best understand the deeper meanings of schooling for Native Hawaiians. Because the outcomes of education are best reflected in what people can do with their lives, I look at how educational policies affected Native Hawaiians’ life choices. I argue here that schooling proved to be an effective means of subjugating the Native Hawaiian to a politicized set of moral standards that made it acceptable to dispossess the natives of their land, to eliminate the mother tongue, to dash a rich Hawaiian oral history and culture from memory, and to overthrow a sovereign government.