Four years after opening, the Pacific Buddhist Academy, the only Shin Buddhist high school in the country, will graduate its first class Friday.
Sheldon Konno, a senior who came from the mission school, said the academy lets him analyze current events by making peace a focus of every subject.
"It helps you look at a situation differently," the 17-year-old said. "Like with the war in Iraq. What's the purpose of war? The U.S. is getting oil ... but you are taking away someone's child."
When studying slavery in American studies, students look at the history of the slave trade and what led to it, but also the "human essence of the topic," school head Pieper Toyama said.
"The central issue is, How can one human being treat another human being that way?" said Toyama, a former headmaster of the private Parker School in Waimea on the Big Island.
"One can say this was a failing of how we were educated as teachers," he added. "Paying attention to peace was not part of our education, and sometimes I think that's why we get into the problems we get into today."
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