266
Child Guidance
constantly to improve. Let it be their aim to make their work as nearly
perfect as human brains and hands can make it.
Such training will make the youth masters and not slaves of labor.
It will lighten the lot of the hard toiler and will ennoble even the
humblest occupation. He who regards work as mere drudgery and
settles down to it with self-complacent ignorance, making no effort to
improve, will find it indeed a burden. But those who recognize science
in the humblest work will see in it nobility and beauty and will take
pleasure in performing it with faithfulness and efficiency
[349]
Wealth Not to Excuse From Practical Training—In many cases
parents who are wealthy do not feel the importance of giving their
children an education in the practical duties of life as well as in the
sciences. They do not see the necessity, for the good of their children’s
minds and morals, and for their future usefulness, of giving them a
thorough understanding of useful labor. This is due their children, that,
should misfortune come, they could stand forth in noble independence,
knowing how to use their hands. If they have a capital of strength, they
cannot be poor, even if they have not a dollar.
Many who in youth were in affluent circumstances may be robbed
of all their riches, and be left with parents and brothers and sisters
dependent upon them for sustenance. Then how important that every
youth be educated to labor, that they may be prepared for any emer-
gency! Riches are indeed a curse when their possessors let them stand
in the way of their sons and daughters obtaining a knowledge of useful
labor, that they may be qualified for practical life
Children to Share Domestic Duties—The faithful mother will
not, cannot, be a devotee to fashion, neither will she be a domestic
slave, to humor the whims of her children and excuse them from labor.
She will teach them to share with her domestic duties, that they may
have a knowledge of practical life. If the children share the labor with
their mother, they will learn to regard useful employment as essential to
happiness, ennobling rather than degrading. But if the mother educates
her daughters to be indolent, while she bears the heavy burdens of
domestic life, she is teaching them to look down upon her as their
servant, to wait on them and do the things they should do. The mother
[350]
13
Education, 222
.
14
Testimonies For The Church 3:150
.