 Okay, we're back. We're live. We're here in the, what do you call it, the 130 block, I guess you'd call it. Life After Statehood here on Think Tank with Ray Tsuchiyama, an informed citizen with whom I have wonderful discussions and so enjoy it. And we, our discussion today is about education in Hawaii. We, we talk about it from the advantage of life after statehood, but we really go further than that. And just to, just to sort of set the stage, Ray and I met serendipitously downstairs and we started talking about the brotherhood of graduates out of the high schools and how everybody knows each other. And those relationships, assuming people stay here, are like life-long. And they mean a lot because they represent a trust relationship between the co-graduates. Usually it's somehow bonded with nostalgia, but the reality is if I went to the same school that you did for at Farrington, for example, I know you for my whole life and I trust you a lot, a lot. The larger possibility is that I will trust you for my life. And this affects the way I do business, the way I do politics, the way I live in the community, my friends, so to speak, for life. And you've had that experience, haven't you? That's entirely correct. And it's a double-edged sword, though. I mean, it's the warm, fuzzy, societal, cultural bond that one has with his or her high school in Hawaii. I also left in a mainland, lived many years in Massachusetts, Washington State, had no networks there when you think about it. I was just an alien in the communities, and many people from Hawaii are, unless they start meeting other people who are from Hawaii, like in Clark County, Nevada, with a 70,000 residence, or in Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, D.C., even in Chicago, there are now clusters of former Hawaii residents. And as you know, since the mid-late 90s, many public high school unions are held in Vegas. And that was a catalyst also for the discovery of Vegas for a place to emigrate, actually, for another job. Sure, because there's a community waiting for you there. Well, yes, that's right. And the business structure, the economy of Vegas, is nearly analogous to Hawaii, in hospitality, hotel, selling cars, insurance, restaurants. If you have a union card, well, in a team's desire to do it, you can get a job tomorrow in Vegas. Very easy. And if you have, of course, if you know a Farrington McKinley or Kalani or Kaimuki friend, a classmate there, that it makes it even easier to get into that community. And even now, there are Hula Halao and also the Hawaiian Chamber of Commerce and many connections in a city that nobody really thought about in the 50s and 60s. It was like way out in the mainland, why leave Hawaii? This is Hawaii's the greatest place on earth. Yeah. So right now, if I snapshot it, and we can ramp up to this from as far back as you want to go, we have a DOE, Department of Education, that goes to all islands. It's a centralized system. It's very unusual. Right. Because on the mainland, usually it's a county-owned or school district-based. And it's funded that way. In this case, it's funded by the state out of our income tax. We have one large university, one and a half billion dollar university with 10 campuses, but it controls higher education, for sure. We have most people who want to go to college, just like numbers, go to college at U-Age. That's what they do. And law school and medical school and so forth. So we're sort of independent. We sort of have a contained system of education. And then, of course, you've got the private schools, which are more powerful here than they are in most of the states. Right. And you have the process of the brain drain, where the best graduates, a lot of graduates, tons of graduates, perforce, they leave town. They get educated to leave town. This is unusual. This is not like it is elsewhere, all these combination of things. So my question to you, this is not easy, and if you want to think about it again, is how do we get here? How do we arrive at this place? That's a very easy question to answer, actually. And the roots of one central school district is not a state of Hawaii invention. It goes back to King Kamehameha III. All right. And when the kingdom declared a school district, it was one of the major revolutions for a monarchy or a nation to declare education with public and to treat every citizen the same from each island, from Kauai to the island of Hawaii. Now, but you could understand why King Kamehameha III was so focused on this, because even until the 1820s, Kauai was a separate kingdom. And Kamehameha I was, after conquering Oahu, had to go back to the island of Hawaii to suppress a rebellion. So even into King Kamehameha II and III, they were afraid of each island going in its own way. So why not consolidate education and to have it really offering for all residents at the same level, at the same level, at the same high level, so that a resident of Lihui would receive the same education as a person in downtown Honolulu, in Hilo. So that is the ideal here. Now, when you go into, and it started out in Olalahabai, teaching in Hawaiian, the language. And they talk. I want to give you a footnote. So at the Mission House, the Mission House Museum conducts plays, plays representing real people who died and who were buried in Oahu Cemetery. And you go to Oahu Cemetery, and you go around, and you talk to some of the decedents there, and they're actors, and they sit by their graves, and when you get to their station, they stand up and they tell you who they are and what they've done. Well, I went last night, and there was a fellow named Andrews. He was a reverend, a minister, trained in Massachusetts, as many of them were in those days, came out here with the specific idea of teaching children. And he describes in his recitation, which is really very well done, what he found and what it was like in teaching children. A, it was very important to the early E to teach children. They realized early on, even as early as the 1820s and 30s, that they really had to educate the Keiki of Hawaii. And that meant they had to educate them in English because they did not speak English then. And they had to educate them in the written word, and they used the Bible for that. And they translated the Bible from various classical languages, even Hebrew, right, into Hawaiian and into English. It was very interesting, very challenging to be a teacher in those days. And if you had a calling for that, it was very gratifying. And so what I get out of that is that education was seen as a really critical component of bringing Hawaii into the 19th century, which was the effort of the E all the way up to the overthrow. And it was working. There was more literacy in Hawaii by the time of the overthrow than most places in the world. And people really cared about education, and it was an open society in that way. And a society in which they had made incredible progress in only a few decades. And I want to point out, Lahaina Luna School was open as a missionary school, actually. But the missionaries taught in Ola Hawaii. That was how important Hawaii was. And then David Malo was an early graduate in the 1830s. And he was in his mid-30s by then. And other upstanding Ali children, also sons, began to go to the school. And they would go out into other islands and start publishing newspapers and books and so forth. Very important papers and books, yeah. Now what happens, though, is interesting to see the evolution is by the 1850s and 60s, language changes to English. Because now that's the language of commerce. And Ali and the king realized that in order to really do business and to do banking, and there were the children and missionaries already embarking into finance. And that's about the time when the royalty started traveling. They traveled everywhere in the world. And 1848 comes to Great Mahele. And then you have an important point there. Lahainala School was the first school west of the Rocky Mountains in 1831. And so it was not a kingdom in the Pacific. They called it a kingdom of education. That's how pride took for education. Then you go to the overthrow. And then from the overthrow into the territory, everything starts to change. Remember in the 19th century, like you say, the curriculum for Lahainala and many of these schools were of the highest caliber, the most innovative New England style secular education, Latin, English, mathematics, navigation, geography. Those were great subjects that were transforming New England just before the great industrial revolution, right? They were going to be real managers of things. Yeah, it wasn't only a transformation. We had a transformation here in that period. But it was a transformation that was moving faster than like transformations elsewhere in the world. Oh, that's right. I mean, there were more literate people in Hawaii than in Korea or Japan or China in a percentage wise. You're absolutely right. It's very strange to think about. There was no public education system in those places. It was still a very strict kingdom. But what I'm saying is from the overthrow into the territory, Lahainaluna School changes into a vocational school. You see? It's a bit different. Suddenly there's a change there that the New Republic of Hawaii and the territory did not see children as a high priority really to educate them into leaders. They wanted more people to enter trades and trade schools. Trade schools. Oh, even Kamehameha wanted to trade. Exactly. For many years, even police and fire people and so forth. And so that was a other lowering of standards in the early 20th century. However, by 1913 was Maui High School was established. McKinley High Schools and so forth. Lahainaluna High Schools began to emerge during the territory. And what drove these schools was the teachings of John Dewey and how to transform immigrants into real Americans. That's the same Dewey decimal system. That's right. And so those people, young teachers who followed the Dewey principle and the acculturation and dealing with immigrants. And Columbia and others were dealing with the same issues in New York City, remember, and the great books began to curriculum out of that period. And so you had a huge revolution in the 20s and 30s that taught Latin, math, forms, daily newspapers in McKinley and Maui High School and the rise of a parallel education system called private schools. The Puddle Halls and your audience began to grow. Why did those private schools emerge? I mean, what we have now is a high percentage of private schools relative to other places. What was there a need for them based on religious organizations? What was it? I think it was very easy to understand if you're a missionary family in the late 19th century or early 20th, you didn't want your children to be with immigrant children. Very simple reason. So there was a parallel private school system that was evolving at that time. And it wasn't religious, per se. It was just a focus that you wanted a cultural base for your own family and children and so forth. And remember, there are thousands of children being born in the early 20th century among Japanese families that had four or five, six children in those days, all entering school. It was a vast transformation. And their parents could not speak English. And this was a great opportunity. And in Maui High School, for example, where my father went to class of 37, 99.90% of teachers came from the mainland. As a result, I mean, they were well educated to teachers. And Maui High School was a beacon of education. That's right. It was a very good school. And you can understand that. And you can see what they were preparing the students for, statehood. The war and statehood were coming very close. And getting off the plantation. Yeah, getting off the plantation. That's right. And they learned about Athenian city-state politics. They learned about Shakespeare. They're studying math and Latin. During the war, my uncle knew enough math to do artillery, for example. Remember, you had to understand math. He knew English to communicate orders and read orders. By studying Latin, and they studied Julius Caesar at Maui High School, he could figure out the signs in Rome and understand some of the Italian. You can see how this was progressing. It was a classy school. It was really a valuable school. And Patsy Mink would graduate in the mid-40s. And remember, Senator Inouye went for his law degree. He went to George Washington. Governor Arresti went to Michigan. Patsy Mink went to Chicago for her law degree. You can see that there were very bright achievement-oriented people in the post-war period. But, I mean, here's a gap. Maybe I'm jumping too many years. But from there till now, we have a DOE that everybody criticizes. We have a DOE that can't seem to get the metrics right. We have kids coming out of school, arguably, who shouldn't be graduating. We have a problem, don't we? How do we get from the excellence of Maui High School in the 30s to the problem we have today? Well, I think the focus changed in the post-war period. That once you achieve statehood, everything they thought the economy and so forth would absorb these people. But the economy really didn't change that much into the 1670s. It was still agriculture. And then the new tourist-based industry took over. I think, after the black-and-white-territory-wide days into technicolor statehood. That's a great way to look at it. Everything, after August 59, they thought that it would be a bridge between Asia and the mainland. They thought that all these, in Hawaii, in general, would have jobs in finance, in science-based research. It's what's all into the Pacific. Mr. Smeiser used to say Geneva of the Pacific. Many, many things they thought would develop in Hawaii. There was actually the economy went other way because of Vietnam, because of many things outside of Hawaii's orbit. And then, remember, you have one school district, like you said, very unusual. And you have a curriculum that does, I think, very well in the middle core of students. But it has challenges dealing with the top people, the top 10%, and the bottom 10%. That's very, very challenging. And the medium is pretty good. I mean, three out of four high school students in Hawaii who enter high school graduate. It's a pretty good score. But remember, it's a challenge to deal with a district that has 190,000 students. It's 12,000 teachers. But you put into that, there are military dependents. And about 15% who have limited English proficiency. So it's a very complicated system. And you have schools in rural parts of Hawaii Island, and Kauai, and Molokai, Kauna Kauai, that has issues quite different than McKinley, or Farrington, or Kalani. So diversity in the state, isn't it? It's unbelievably deseretified. And so in a normal structure on the mainland, Molokai, or Kailua, or Le Hui will be its own school system. The district. Would that be better? I think if it all comes down to, if the people who are running, administrators, running, they should know the best, right? I mean, they are the neighborhood. People who run Waianae should know Waianae very well. I don't know about Waianae, or the problems of Honoka'a, or Lanai, you know, a city. They're very neighborhood, very small-oriented. So you have to have people who know about that area. They have to know about the families, the economy, what kind of jobs that they're going to go into afterwards. It would be better. Yeah, right? It's like those, we've talked about this before, the little booths in Tokyo. On the kiosk, on the police. Yes, in Tokyo, where the fellow in the kiosk, the policeman, knows everybody on the block. So you have a community on the block, and it works really well that way. And it would work well, maybe better, if we had districts where the people running the district knew everybody in the district. Yeah, so that is, but the key is, would they have the ability to use money and resources to apply to the issues of their, because right now, economy of scale, so that DOE can buy huge amounts of food or resources and have cheaper discounts and so forth. So that is the key in all of this, whether you have a new structure that allows for devolution into neighborhoods and so forth, other than a very centralized system. Yeah, I'd like to cover how the state would change this and how it has changed since statehood, and where it is now going forward. Because people are more aware of education and the flaws in the system. So when we come back from this break, Ray, we're going to take a look at the post-statehood period and the trajectory going forward. That's Ray Tsuchiyama, informed citizen. You're here on Think Tech Hawaii, life after statehood, and we're talking about education in Hawaii. So ambitious. We'll be right back. Match day is no ordinary day. The pitch, hallowed ground for players and supporters alike, excitement builds. Game plans are made with responsibility in mind. Celebrations are underway. Ready for kickoff. MLS clubs and our supporters rise to the challenge. We make responsible decisions while we cheer on our heroes and toast their success. Elevate your match day experience. If you drink, never drive. OK, we're back real live with Ray Tsuchiyama, informed citizen, talking about education in Hawaii, here on life after statehood. So I give you the moment of statehood. People were coming off the plantations. The schools had been very good, but maybe the state was changing in a certain way so that the schools did not maintain that level of excellence, perhaps, the public schools. And by the time we get here to 2017, there's lots of controversy about it. And maybe one of the reasons is that the DOE sits in the lap of the legislature. And if there's one place you don't want to be, it's in the lap of the legislature because you get micromanaged just the way the university has had autonomy problems. And maybe that creates a bureaucracy, if you will. Maybe I'm using that word with a small b when I should be using a capital b. But here we are, and we have to figure out how to make it work better. We have to develop that excellence. And at the same time, we have to keep our graduates home somehow. What do you think? Can you explain the evolution of it till now? And then we can talk about where it's going. Well, education, state, DOE, or public education was not really an issue when I was a kid, interesting enough. It was never raised and so forth. Everything was rolling along. And then, as you may recall, it was not until the early 90s that suddenly a magazine in town called Honolulu Magazine began ranking the schools. Suddenly they put a huge spotlight on the public education system. People, parents in particular, began to Russian and see where their children's schools were ranked. But there's another group that really was not involved called Business. Business was never really part of the equation. Well, somebody else's problem, yeah. But as you recall, when you go back in time, one of the major leaders was Lex Brody. Remember him, a small business person. Thank you very much. Yeah, right. But he was born and raised in Kauai. He was surfing in his 80s, but he had a great small business culture. I even go to Lex Brody's today, because I know he's an honest kind of culture in a business. Business, celebrating the whole idea of small business. But he said he's a product of public schools, and he came out of Kauai. And he wanted to get into that. And remember, Don Horner of First and Wine was also very active, still active. Yeah, a bank, leading bank, and so forth. So it was the spotlight from the 90s into the 2000s. And suddenly, the school superintendent became a lightning rod. We have to choose the right one. If we don't choose the right one, everything will go. Suddenly, nobody knows who that person was in the 60s or 70s. The school system was just moving along. But the other thing about society itself, the teacher was also, I think, neglected as a person who really adds value in society. And I'll give you a very simple question. How many statues of teachers do we have? Around who? Do we have a holiday devoted to teachers? In Brazil, in Sao Paulo, there was a road, and there was a name. I said, who is this? He's an engineer. He was a famous engineer in Brazil, who was named after. Elevated to fame and celebrity. There was no teacher, just like there's no day devoted to science, interestingly enough, or scientists that we need. And there is no really public recognition of the teacher's providing value. And so, but again, there was a disconnect between business and education, because business and tourism and hospitality is not based on research. It's not based on product development. It absorbed a lot of people into hotels and hospitals and jobs. And the people who graduated from engineering or science left on the mainland, and that was a safety valve for people who left. So I think a less business really starts to commit also to visioning a future and say, this is the future of Hawaii. In order to get to that future, we must have this type of curriculum and this kind of teaching. It's a very enormous project. Because like I said before, why was there Latin and math and geography and English? You could see that there was a great preparation for statehood and the transformation of it. It takes you somewhere. It's not just learning for its own sake. It makes excellence among that generation and for the state. But even among leaders in tourism and hospitality, there's a disconnect because if I went to them today and say, hey, I'm Ray, I bet that in the future e-commerce or databases or automatic check-in or robotics and hospitality won't be of any use to you. They'll all look at me and say, no, those are things of the future. That's all kind of coming. We are all into e-commerce. We all have to take care of how to deal with drones with automation and so forth. But they're not thinking what curriculum in the schools would lead to people who can introduce those technologies to a teacher, wouldn't you? Well, I mean, it's such an exuberance in saying, we're going to make a whole person out of you. We're going to expose you to the world and prepare you for the world. You're going to win with what we give you. But let me throw one other thing that we need to discuss, the unions. Because sometime after statehood, the unions got really strong in education in the schools. And they were also strong in the university, I might add. And right now, I would say, at least for the DOE, they own the DOE. What they want, they get, although they lost a case, I think, yesterday in the Supreme Court about some kind of benefits for their teachers. But I'm thinking that the unions have not really been helpful in reaching excellence. They represent their members. They want to do the best they can for their teachers and other management people, even principals in the school system, but they don't necessarily advance the notion of education and educating children and making the state great with education. And I suggest to you, and like your opinion, that that has had a profound and deleterious effect on our schools. I think the difference between character Hawaii and the state system today is that we are sustaining a system, rather than creating a system. There has been a system that evolved in the state already in the 60s. I was a child. I went to Fern Elementary, Oculaco Intermediate, and Brandon High School. But that system continued onwards the same when you think about it from the 60s and onward. We really didn't look at the future and say, what are the things that we could do to not only be nationally ranked, what are the best practices out there, and see how we can even be better. Right. Excellent, but no class. Yeah, right, in all 50 states of the union, but beyond that, and really go ahead. But I think that takes very strong state leadership. OK. I think there has to be a priority, like I say. There has to be a synergy of business also. That's the, like I said before, I mentioned that several times. But you cannot complain about the quality of your workers unless you're really involved in the curricula, what you really need in your workplace and the new technologies. We're out of time. I wish we weren't. I want more. We haven't finished, but we have. Thank you very much for coming down and discussing. Ray Tuchiyama, informed citizen here on Education in Hawaii. On life after statehood, there is much more to come. Thank you so much, Ray. Thank you. Hello.