In 1916, Kaua‘i Judge Christopher Blom Hofgaard (1859-1931) recalled that when he was Waimea District school agent for a number of years in the early 1890s there were only two teachers in Kekaha, five in Waimea, three in Makaweli and
In 1916, Kaua‘i Judge Christopher Blom Hofgaard (1859-1931) recalled that when he was Waimea District school agent for a number of years in the early 1890s there were only two teachers in Kekaha, five in Waimea, three in Makaweli and five in Hanapepe.
And the one teacher at Miloli‘i on the Na Pali coast needed to strip and swim around a point twice a day to and from his little school.
On Ni‘ihau, a teacher named Kaomea taught every child on the island from the ages of 7 to 15 every day of the year for one year, and no pupil was ever absent or tardy.
Over in Mana, Diedrich Prigge Sr. taught school in a small bungalow on a patch of salt flat that always flooded in rainy weather and upon which nothing could grow. Still, Prigge persisted in carrying out the orders of the school department that he teach his students agriculture — albeit without success.
Hofgaard said, “One day I was walking up the old road along the foothills (mauka of Kekaha) when I heard strange noises coming from a small house on the makai side under some coconut palms. It was the Kekaha School with David Kua as teacher. The children were spelling in chorus. David asked me in and handed me a Hawaiian spelling book, from which I acquired the now lost art of spelling Hawaiian words.”
He also remarked that “I used to think that some of these old-time superintendents lacked common sense. I remember one of them had a mania for manual training. The schools were supplied with a lot of good tools and a nice set came to Kekaha School where there was not a teacher who could drive a nail so it would hold anything together.”
