The Essential Education by Ida Fischer Carnahan

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 3, 1907

The Essential Education

By Ida Fischer Carnahan

EVER since God told Adam that he must earn his living by the sweat of his face, man has looked upon labor not in its true sense as a blessing, but as a curse. He has schemed in every way to avoid obeying the divine command.

When it came to the development of an educational system, the prime idea seems to have been so to equip the pupil that he would not have to work. How common it is for a father to say, “I want to give my boy an education so that he will not have to work all his life as I have done.” This thought has been impressed upon the youth until to-day by far the large majority of our young people consider that it would be a great blessing indeed to be able to do something that would not require hard work. It is a just maxim that “demand produces the supply.” As the youth everywhere have been demanding an education that would release them from the necessity of work, the educators have attempted to supply this, and have made education largely the training of the intellect. Now the main fault is in the fundamental principle.

Work is a blessing, not a curse. The divine command that man should earn his living by the sweat of his face was not a punishment for his sin, but a divine provision that would enable him to continue living in spite of his sin. The poisons of the body have to be eliminated, and work is the best known thing to eliminate them.

The youth should be taught that education is not to free them from the disagreeable duties of hard work, but rather to enable them to become masters rather than slaves of these duties; in other words, it is to enable them to perform these duties with more skill and dispatch,—to become masters rather than slaves. Taking this view of the situation, our educational problem changes quite materially. It is no longer a training simply of the intellect to be shrewd so that they can see at a glance how to take advantage of their neighbors and of circumstances, and drive a shrewd bargain. It is a training also to fit them to do skilled labor, better labor in any department of human industry than they could do otherwise. Our youth need to be led to see the real dignity of labor; without which man can not be happy, in the true sense of the word.

While the home influences the individual character more perhaps than any other agency, it is the system of education employed in our schools that determines the general sentiment of the school community; for it is the agency that binds together and unifies. Hence, if we desire to have our young people become a sturdy class of good workers, we need so to modify our school curriculum that manual training will become one of its important branches. It will require a great deal of courage on the part of all who have to do with education, both parents and teachers. Like all other reforms, it will meet with much opposition, and it will be difficult to give it sufficient trial to demonstrate its worth, but it is the proper and only right education.

IDA FISCHER CARNAHAN.