by Michael Moriarty
V.P. Kohala High and Elementary PTSA
This is being written because the pursuit of excellence in our schools, while widely touted as an absolute necessity for our children, is being implemented in a fashion that is causing needless injury to a sector of our population. The ultimate goal of "excellence" is not at issue here. Rather, it is the ambiance and setting in which we deliver our exhortation toward this goal. Motivation and goals fit together and not understanding one, in real life, can undermine the other.
The group most clearly at issue is a sector of our Hawaiian population. It can be considered a sector, because the motives that drive them are not necessarily the driving force in the entire population of Hawaiians. Many Hawaiians have moved away from this set of values. Moreover, the values associated with the group in question have penetrated what might loosely be terms "local culture," to the point where it can be said that these values represent people of ethnic groups other than Hawaiians. This being the case, it can be said that we are talking about a fair sized group of our youngsters...
Firstly, one should not be deluded into thinking that, as a group, Hawaiians...
1. Cannot deal with competition.
2. Have no standards of excellence within their culture.
As to the first point, anyone who has ever participated in a sporting event (canoe paddling, surfing contest etc.), has likely encountered the calm and intense Hawaiian who comes over and warmly wishes you the best of luck in the contest, shakes your hand while looking you sincerely in the eye and from there on in is all business. Expect no quarter from this person. So much for Hawaiians not being able to compete.
Excellence in the Hawaiian culture has had much of its superstructure and fabric ripped to pieces by historical events and by the current socio/political framework. Indeed, there is room for an entire paper(s?) dealing with this subject. Perhaps the longest lasting vestige of this facet of Hawaiian life remains in the view of Hawaiians toward maturity.
In the Hawaiian culture, you can be 32 years old, with teenage children and still be one of the "youth." It is those who have reached the age of 40 or 45 who have reached maturity. The root of this view lies in the ancient demands for excellence placed upon the mastery of any skill. It took that long to fully understand and be able to perform any of the major functions in Hawaiian society.
While these may be interesting musings, the question arises as to how this is connected with excellence in our schools today? Asking ourselves, "How a people with a culture that has components of excellence and competition within it can so often turn up at the bottom of the pile, under our system?" points us in the right direction. The central question then becomes...
"What are they competing to be excellent for?"
In today's school, it is typical for a teacher to present the idea of excellence in terms of the rewards available to an individual. "Seek excellence and you shall be rewarded!" The touted rewards are...
Status
scholarships
a good job
money
etc.
...note that these rewards all deal with the individual "getting ahead." A component of "getting ahead" is that someone must be left behind, that the objective is to be better than (not better at) someone else. These signals are commonly delivered to our children in a subtle way, without the delivering person really having thought about how being encouraged to be "excellent" as a tool of individual self aggrandizement might affect people from a culture that has other values.
The supposedly unmotivated Hawaiian will work hard for weeks on the 1st birthday luau for the distantly related 2nd cousin. This is because the Hawaiian values activities that, above all else, extend and strengthen ties of friendship and family.
When you tell a small Hawaiian person to excel in order to be their best, or to get the rewards that motivate those from Western (or other social climbing) cultures, they don't analyze the offering except to know that this is not their thing. What we end up with is a person turned off to the whole school experience.
What if, instead of presenting excellence to our children the way we do now, we were to couch this encouragement in terms of their being able to better help their family and friends? The same math, or social studies work takes on an entirely new meaning, under these circumstances.
The sick part of this whole matter is that telling children they need to excel in order to help family and friends does not harm the children of other cultures or in any way remove the drive for excellence from the schools. In fact, these values are universal, central, to all cultures.
Given that what we are doing now is having a devastating effect upon Hawaiian children, and given that changing the mode of presentation to that described above does nothing to harm the other children, is there really any reasonable question that we should work consciously to change our approach?
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