The school year was 1921-1922. In the rural area of Waialua, Oahu, my grandparents were in a crisis situation as they had four children approaching school age.

My grandmother (Florence Beardmore) was an English teacher (in England) before she married my grandfather (Stanley James Beardmore). Theirs was a proper English family where there was no tolerance for any misuse of the English language.

Shortly after their marriage, my grandfather became the office manager for the Waialua Plantation in rural Oahu and it was not too long afterwards that three of their four children were old enough to start school. When my grandmother heard the teachers speaking pigeon English in the classroom, my grandmother decided to keep the first child out of school and use her teaching skills to home school her children. The principal of Waialua Elementary School, Mrs. Churchill, was very supportive of this plan, and worked with my grandmother to organize the women in the plantation to keep their children out of school until an English Standard Program could be established. These mothers would not lower their standards to accommodate the poor spoken English in the classroom. Their plan worked, and an English standard system was established for the following school year. From the beginning, classes in the English Standard schools were racially diverse, the only requirement was the spoken and written skills using English in the classroom.

(Author unknown)

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