Education leaders across Hawaii agree: When the Hokule‘a embarks on its daring sea voyage around the globe next year, thousands of local students should come along for the ride.
On Monday, officials with the state Board of Education, the University of Hawaii, Kamehameha Schools, Punahou School and other institutions pledged to work with the Polynesian Voyaging Society to bring the upcoming trip into classrooms across Hawaii.
"Any child can be on the voyage, if not on the deck," society President Nainoa Thompson said after an hourlong ceremony with its new education partners at the Marine Education and Training Center on Sand Island. The group signed a document dubbed "Promise to Children," a legally nonbinding pledge to use the Hokule‘a journey in their classroom curricula.
The voyaging society plans to post online dispatches of the approximately 48-month, 49,000-nautical-mile voyage from a new vessel, the Hikianalia, which will join the Hokule‘a to provide science, safety support and educational outreach.
The Hokule‘a first set sail more than 30 years ago in the manner of the ancient Polynesians, and its crew plans to leave Hawaii on its Malama Honua Worldwide Voyage in early May. It’s the first time the craft, largely credited with helping to revive Hawaiian traditions, will attempt such an ambitious — and dangerous — undertaking.
Thompson said he wants the journey’s educational benefits for Hawaiian students back home to outweigh the risks. He aims for those who participate to feel pride in their Hawaiian culture, and for the Hokule‘a’s voyage to inspire them to find their own way in life.
He wasn’t sure how many students would experience the journey in class. However, about 20,000 local school children have visited the famous double-hulled voyaging canoe in the past five months as its crew completed the training leg considered part of the trip, Thompson said.
It’s a way to "connect this 21st-century technology — and all the science that the students need to learn — with some very fundamental values," Schools Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi said Monday.
Isaiah Pule, a senior at Kamaile Academy in Waianae and a member of the public charter school’s navigation club, also spoke Monday. Pule, 17, said all the knot-tying, sailing and other activities he’s done with the voyaging society during the past five years or so have given him confidence and a better sense of Hawaiian identity.
It’s also helped open doors. Last summer, Pule said, he gave a talk on traditional sailing during a college readiness program held on Hawaii island.
Pule was approached afterward by the University of Rochester’s dean of admissions, who was in the audience, to see if he was interested in the university, Pule said. Pule’s still not sure where he’ll attend college, but he’ll leave the islands Friday for New York to visit Rochester, N.Y.
