Manual Training as an Essential Factor in Education
By J. H. Haughey
This is a Seventh-day Adventist General Conference missionary educational convention. And in just so far as it is such, it stands for the cause of God in the entire world; it touches the message of the third angel at all points; it forms a symmetrical whole, neither belittling that which is truly great nor unduly exalting that which is really small; and in its results it produces a well-balanced, all-round curriculum of studies and system of education.
As a committee appointed by your General Conference at its last session,29we wish during this hour to touch with the tips of our fingers, as it is possible only to do, one of the great threefold fundamentals of true higher education. These are indeed folded together by a divine hand, not to be rent asunder by vain philosophy, human science, or false deceit. Our topic is the first of this trio,—industrial, Biblical, missionary; or, physical, intellectual, spiritual.
Manual training even among Seventh-day Adventists in their institutions of learning, is as yet a child of small stature and of slow growth. As such it needs this convention as a tender father and a nursing mother; and in its struggles for existence it demands our energy and enthusiasm, as well as our deepest sympathy and most constant care.
Two great commissions have been given to the world, the first of which was not, “Go, teach,” but, “Go, toil.” “In toil shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.” Gen. 3:17, R. V. This commission is to all men in all time, for the new dispensation as well as for the old. “If a man will not work, neither shall he eat,” is the inspired declaration of the great apostle to the Gentiles. Those giants of the antediluvian world, whose lives were prolonged to nearly a thousand years, were tillers of the soil. The children of Abraham were an agricultural people. In Israel it was a crime not to teach every child some trade. It was a common saying, “He that teacheth not his son some honest work to do, is as if he taught him robbery.”
Nearly all the truly great or influential men of earth have come from the lowly walks of life; from the plow, from the shepherd’s crook, from the carpenter’s bench, from the fisherman’s net, from the tent-maker’s tent, the blacksmith’s anvil, or the cobbler’s last. And this is true, not only of the noble men, but of the noble women of earth. Whether we have seen, heard, or read of them, it matters not. They may have been servant girls, cup-bearers of cold water to thirsty souls; with bended form, but loving heart, they may have sat plying the needle, or stood over the tub cleansing the soiled clothes, or over the heated stove preparing healthful food for hungry mouths, yet, like Esther, they will some day be recognized as the queens of earth; for as has been said, “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.” I might refer you to the fathers and mothers of prophets, priests, and judges, of great generals and kings in Israel and in the world; to the early lives of great missionaries and reformers, to renowned orators and statesmen, to presidents of the United States and other states, to the presidents of the General Conference and other conferences, and almost without exception you would find that their strong and vigorous bodies and minds, their iron wills and sturdy characters, were the products of simple but rugged lives of toil.
The whole world sees the necessity of combining physical labor with their school work. Indeed, many of their schools are in some respects far ahead of ours. It is not only interesting, but astounding to note the rapid progress made within the past few years, especially along agricultural lines. The movement to put agriculture into the public schools is felt with great force in Germany, France, Russia, Italy, and with Switzerland. Echoes of it are heard from South America and Australia; and it seems that no part of the civilized world, where there are public school privileges, has escaped the impulse. It is said that in the United States there has been legislation introducing agriculture into the schools of North Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Virginia, Tennessee, Washington, California, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Indiana, and in many schools also in Michigan, Georgia, Mississippi, and Missouri. And time would fail us to more than mention the fact that agriculture, floriculture, horticulture, vegetable gardening, or all of these combined, are receiving much attention in high schools and in State normal and agricultural schools all over this country. “A text-book on agriculture has just been issued especially adapted to the primary schools of Bolivia.” “Agricultural education in Rumania includes seven elementary agricultural schools, six secondary agricultural schools, two model farms, and a central agricultural school.” “Agricultural education in Porto Rico includes nineteen agricultural schools.” “An agricultural school is in operation in Poona, India, with seventy-seven students.” “An agricultural institute has recently been established in the Transvaal.” “Agriculture in the West Indies is taught to boys about fourteen years of age.” “There are thirty-one schools in the Rhine province, in which agriculture is taught, and in which there have been enrolled, up to the present time, 11,457 pupils.” “A school of agriculture, with farm attached, has been organized at Mason Carree, Algeria.” “A school with a fifty-two-acre farm has been established in Turkey.” “Wisconsin now requires agriculture to be taught in every rural province school in the State, and no diploma can be issued to any pupil graduating from a rural school unless he has had instruction in agriculture.”