Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 17, Number 8, 1 ʻAukake 2000 — Community-based education a "kākou thing"ʻ [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Community-based education a "kākou thing"ʻ

By K0 Kahakalau, Kanu o ka "Āina Editor's note: This is the first of two parts of an article by Kanu o ka 'Āina coordinator Kū Kahakalau of Honoka'a, Hawai'i. IN PREVIOUS articles, Dr. Kekaulike Sing and Dr. Manu Meyer highlighted the obvious need for the advancement of Hawaiian education and the vital role of Hawaiian communities in our process of decolonization. This article is a eall to the numerous stakeholders involved in Hawaiian education to unite, according to the Hawaiian tradition of kūkulu kumuhana: the pooling of strength — physical, intellectual, emoūonal and spiritual — for a eommon purpose, namely the establishment of a seamless, comprehensive system of Hawaiian education. The need for a Hawaiian system of education was first officially expressed in 1997, when a report issued by the federally funded Native Hawaiian Education Council listed the following three goals:

• to empower and support communities in the development of successful Hawaiian educational programs; • to improve the experiences of native Hawaiians, especially those within the

public school system, through institutional change; • to establish a Native Hawaiian educational system. Interestingly, efforts to achieve these very same goals have been in process for a number of years. On the community level, Hawaiian grassroots organizations throughout the archi-

pelago have, for the past decades, implemented a wide variety of excellent community initiatives. Even though frequently un- or under-funded, these programs — beyond the shadow of a doubt — have proved that Hawaiians ean create quality educational programs and that the educational success of Hawaiian students is intricately tied to the integration of native language, culture and traditions into the educational

process. Within the public school system as well, Hawaiian educators have worked tirelessly to implement quality, cultural-lv-driven Drograms. Manv of these DOE

programs have struggled to survive from year to year, their flexibility and funding inhibited by a giant state bureaucracy. Despite these obstacles, however, successful DOE programs have clearly demonstrated that Hawaiian public school students perform significantly better, when Hawaiian traditions and values form the educational foundations.

Another sigmficant development in Hawaiian public education has been the approval of Kanu o ka 'Āina New Century Public Charter School in May. As Hawai'i's first publicly-funded, native-designed and community-con-trolled, bi-lingual, bi-cultural K-12 school, Kanu o ka 'Āina is specifically designed to meet the unique educational needs and wants of Hawai'i native smdent population. As such, Kanu o ka 'Āina hopes to become a model for other Hawaiian communities to assert their right to control their own educational

process. Nearly a dozen such Hawaiian communities from Ni'ihau to Puna, have already joined Kanu o ka 'Āina to form Nā Lei Na'auao Native Hawaiian Charter School Allianee. This Allianee intends to use the charter school movement to implement throughout the archipelago quality public charter schools, that integrate the community, the Hawaiian eulture and the environment into the educational process. On a federal level as well, the educational needs of Hawaiian students have been acknowledged and efforts initiated to improve the conditions of native Hawaiians in their homeland. Since the passage and subsequent funding of the Native Hawaiian Education Act in 1988, the federal government has provided millions of federal dollars in grants yearly to a handful of select programs. However, instead of allowing Hawaiians to work towards the creation of a seamless, eomprehensive system of Hawaiian education, federal guidelines require that grant applicants focus on specific populations or areas of eoneem as determined by speeial interest groups rather than actual Hawaiian community needs and wants. ■ Part 2 ofthis article will run in the September issue ofKa Wai Ola o OHA.

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