How to Save a Dying Language
The Hawaiian language nearly went extinct. Now, it’s being taught in dozens of immersion schools.
By Alia Wong
Editor’s Note: In the next five years, most of America’s most experienced teachers will retire. The Baby Boomers are leaving behind a nation of more novice educators. In 1988, a teacher most commonly had 15 years of experience. Less than three decades later, that number had fallen to just three years leading a classroom. The Atlantic’s “On Teaching” project is crisscrossing the country to talk to veteran educators. This story is the ninth in our series.
The orphan was surveying the sea from atop a lava-rock shrine when he saw them — omens that looked just as his uncle, a kahuna, had foretold. There was a flock of airborne stingrays amid a series of towers, all hovering over a forest floating above the surface.
The orphan sounded the alarm as soon as the apparition materialized, just as the kahuna had instructed. But then the boy’s curiosity got the best of him. He ran down to the shore and immediately began swimming. And as he swam he realized: It wasn’t divine intervention — at least, not directly. Rather, what he saw as an omen was a massive, man-made object. And inside that object were actual men, who saw the boy in the water and called to…
