Editorial: Find more ways to teach Hawaiian

At Hawaii’s last Constitutional Convention — convened in 1978 against the backdrop of the Hawaiian Renaissance — delegates adopted several measures aimed at embracing and revitalizing Native Hawaiian culture. Among them: designating Hawaiian as an official language for the state, alongside English.

This measure was intended, in part, to prevail over past practices tied to Western colonialism, such as a ban on speaking Hawaiian in public schools. Also, delegates required the state to “provide for a comprehensive Hawaiian education program consisting of language, culture and history as part of the regular curriculum of the public schools.”

In a two-pronged response, the state Department of Education established its Hawaiian Studies program, through which students learn about Hawaiian history, culture and language — typically taught by native-speaking kupuna — along with the deeper dive of a language immersion program.

Ka Papahana Kaiapuni Hawai‘i delivers instruction exclusively in Hawaiian until fifth grade, when English is introduced. The immersion program is in place at a total of two dozen public schools on Oahu, Maui, Molokai, Kauai and Hawaii island. The absence of Lanai on that list prompted a recent lawsuit.

In that case, the state Supreme Court ruled last week that Hawaii’s Constitution requires reasonable access to Hawaiian language immersion programs.

In a 4-1 ruling, the justices maintained that the constitutional provision for comprehensive Hawaiian study requires the state to “institute a program that is reasonably calculated to revive the Hawaiian language”; and “providing reasonable access to Hawaiian immersion education is currently essential to reviving the Hawaiian language.”

However, since the 1978 amendments did not specify immersion education in public schools as constitutionally required, it seems that the means to language revival should be up for debate.

In a partial dissent, Justice Paula Nakayama wrote she was “wary of a court dictating the methods that the state must employ to satisfy broad constitutional mandates.” Agreed.

The Legislature in tandem with the state Department of Education and the Board of Education, should continue to take the lead in shaping the scope of student instruction. In recent years, the DOE has demonstrated such commitment by establishing an Office of Hawaiian Education, which is tasked with planning and implementing an expansion of a K-12 Hawaiian education.

The lawsuit was brought against DOE and the Board by a parent whose two daughters were unable to enroll in an immersion program at Lanai School, which houses the island’s only elementary. The school, which struggles to fill teaching positions due to remote location and cost-of-living challenges, had been unable to recruit a teacher for an immersion post.

The state contended that its non-immersion Hawaiian education lessons — the standard for a vast majority of public schools students — meets the constitutional requirement. However, for about 2,000 students and their families statewide, immersion is viewed as the needed ticket.

It’s apparent that DOE should do more to make access to either program available to all. On the matter of access, the court majority sent the case back to the lower court to sort out whether the Education Department had taken “reasonable measures” to connect the girls with an immersion program.

Moving forward, given that providing students on all islands with access to Ka Papahana Kaiapuni is a daunting task for the statewide school district, the DOE should consider pursuing partnerships with olelo-focused partners — such as the University of Hawaii’s Hawaiinuiakea School of Hawaiian Knowledge and the Kamehameha Schools — that are committed to further reviving the Hawaiian language.