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Manual Training
137
teaches young people to bear their share of life’s burdens, is most
effective in promoting growth of mind and character.
Young people need to be taught that life means earnest work,
responsibility, care-taking. They need a training that will make them
practical men and women who can cope with emergencies. They
should be taught that the discipline of systematic, well-regulated
labor is essential not only as a safeguard against the vicissitudes of
life but as an aid to all-around development.
Notwithstanding all that has been said and written concerning
the dignity of physical work, the feeling prevails that it is degrading.
Young men want to become teachers, clerks, merchants, physicians,
lawyers, or to occupy some other position that does not require phys-
ical effort. Young women shun housework and seek an education in
other lines. These need to learn that no man or woman is degraded by
honest toil. That which degrades is idleness and selfish dependence.
Idleness fosters self-indulgence, and the result is a life empty and
barren—a field inviting the growth of every evil. “The earth which
drinks in the rain that often comes upon it, and bears herbs useful
for those by whom it is cultivated, receives blessing from God; but if
it bears thorns and briers, it is rejected, and is near to being cursed,
whose end is to be burned.”
Hebrews 6:7, 8
.
Many branches of study that consume the student’s time are not
essential to usefulness or happiness, but every young person should
have a thorough acquaintance with everyday duties. If need be, a
young woman can dispense with a knowledge of a foreign language
and algebra, or even of the piano, but it is indispensable that she
learn to perform efficiently the duties that pertain to homemaking.
In many ways, life’s happiness is bound up with faithfulness in
common duties.
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Since both men and women have a part in home-making, boys
as well as girls should gain a knowledge of household duties. To
make a bed and put a room in order, to wash dishes, to prepare a
meal, to wash and repair his own clothing, is a training that need not
make any boy less manly; it will make him happier and more useful.
And if girls, in turn, could learn to use the saw and the hammer,
as well as the rake and hoe, they would be better fitted to meet the
emergencies of life.