East Coast Kahuna

Private School

I'm continuing on the subject I started in the last posting. I'm so fortunate that my parents had the foresight to send me to Iolani and not Waipahu High School (there wasn't a Pearl City High at that time so we would have been bused to the school one town farther away from Honolulu). My parents focused their attention on education - my older sister and brother also went to private school - my sister to St. Andrew's Priory (Iolani's sister school - Iolani was boys only at that time); my brother also to Iolani. And even if they sent us to Punahou, we would have gotten a great education. Seriously, Punahou and Iolani are both extremely highly regarded, above all the other private schools in Hawaii. There is little argument that these are the two best schools in the the state, but it's controversial which one is better. I know Iolani is better, but I may be biased.

For the Nisei, my parents' generation, one of their primary goals was to provide for their children so that they could rise up in status through a good education. In his book Kodomo no tame ni: For the sake of the children (1978), Prof. Dennis Ogawa discusses the Japanese-American experience in Hawaii from the original Issei immigration to the time period that the Sansei (my generation) were getting older and the Yonsei were just starting to be born.

I'll alway be grateful of having the opportunity to attend Iolani - otherwise I would not be attending the schools on the East Coast (MIT, Columbia and Cornell). I would not be living in New York, reflecting back on the cultural differences with Hawaii.

posted by tjh14850 @ 3:28 PM