A Proper Balance of Physical and Mental Labor
[
Testimonies for the Church 3:152-159
(1872).]
All the powers of the mind should be called into use and developed,
in order for men and women to have well-balanced minds. The world is
full of one-sided men and women, who have become such because one
set of their faculties was cultivated, while others were dwarfed from
inaction. The education of most youth is a failure. They overstudy,
while they neglect that which pertains to practical business life. Men
and women become parents without considering their responsibilities,
and their offspring sink lower in the scale of human deficiency than
they themselves. Thus the race is fast degenerating. The constant
application to study, as the schools are now conducted, is unfitting
youth for practical life. The human mind will have action. If it is not
active in the right direction, it will be active in the wrong. In order to
preserve the balance of the mind, labor and study should be united in
the schools.
Provision should have been made in past generations for education
upon a larger scale. In connection with the schools should have been
agricultural and manufacturing establishments. There should also have
been teachers of household labor. And a portion of the time each day
should have been devoted to labor, that the physical and mental powers
might be equally exercised. If schools had been established upon the
plan we have mentioned, there would not now be so many unbalanced
minds....
I have been led to inquire, Must all that is valuable in our youth be
sacrificed in order that they may obtain a school education? Had there
been agricultural and manufacturing establishments connected with
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our schools, and had competent teachers been employed to educate the
youth in the different branches of study and labor, devoting a portion
of each day to mental improvement and a portion to physical labor,
there would now be a more elevated class of youth to come upon the
stage of action to have influence in molding society. Many of the
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