Manual Training as an Essential Factor in Education
By J. H. Haughey
(Concluded)
If our work in agriculture could be placed alongside of that done in some of our State agricultural colleges, we would be ashamed at the contrast. Think also of what is being done at the Cornell University station, which is in charge of the university itself. Think of the volumes that have been issued from its press, written or edited by Prof. L. H. Bailey alone, who has for years been connected with that institution,—volumes on the subject of agriculture, or the raising of the common farm products; horticulture, or the raising of fruits; floriculture, or the raising of flowers; olericulture, or the raising of the common garden vegetables, and on many other rural subjects also, aside from his great twenty-dollar encyclopedia of agriculture, which should be in the libraries of all our intermediate schools, academies, training-schools, and colleges; and then you will see that his name has justly become a common household word among the children in all our public schools and in all our farmers’ homes.
And this is only an illustration. Similar words might be spoken concerning Walter Page, Luther Burbank, Booker T. Washington, and many others. To this might also be added the great number of agricultural bulletins which have been issued by the United States government, and the several State governments of the Union. Again, think of the powerful instrument this same representation would have been in the hands of God’s people if they had risen to their high calling in harmony with the instruction given on this subject, even before any of these books, or the work of these men, and almost before they themselves, saw the light of day. What was this instruction? As has already been stated in the paper read by Prof. C. C. Lewis, the instruction was clear and explicit as to what relation the industries should sustain to the educational work among us as a people, even before the location and erection of the old Battle Creek College in 1874. A few statements bearing on this subject from “Christian Education” may be quoted at this point:—
“In order for children to have health, happiness, vivacity, and well-developed muscles and brains, they should be much in the open air, and have well-regulated employment and amusement. Children and youth who are kept at school and confined to books, can not have sound physical constitutions. The exercise of the brain in study, without corresponding physical exercise, has a tendency to attract the blood to the brain, and the circulation of the blood through the system becomes unbalanced. The brain has too much blood, and the extremities too little. There should be rules regulating their studies to certain hours, and then a portion of their time should be spent in physical labor.”
“In order to preserve the balance of the mind, labor and study should be united in schools.”
“If there had been agriculture and manufacturing establishments in connection with our schools, and competent teachers had 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 of the day 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. The youth who would be graduated from such institutions would many of them go forth with stability of character. They would have perseverance, fortitude, and courage to surmount obstacles, and principles that would not be swerved by a wrong influence, however popular.”
“The foregoing is a statement of what might have been done by a proper system of education. But time is too short now to accomplish that which might have been done in past generations. But we can do much, even in these last days, to correct the existing evils in the education of youth. And because time is short, we should be in earnest, and work zealously to give the youth that education which is consistent with our faith. We are reformers. We desire that our children should study to the best advantage. In order to do this, employment should be given them which would call into exercise the muscles. Daily, systematic labor constitutes a part of the education of the youth even at this late period. Much can now be gained in connecting labor with the schools. The students acquire, in following this plan, elasticity of spirit and vigor of thought, and can accomplish more mental labor in a given time than they could by study alone. And they can leave their schools with their constitutions unimpaired, with strength and courage to persevere in any position in which the providence of God may place them.”
Mark that all this was written in 1873, before a single college had been established among us, and tells not only what should be, but what ought to have been in our little schools which had been in operation previous to this time, as well as in all the schools of the generations of the past. In this connection I wish to call attention to the fact that from this same source we have been told in recent years, while struggling under the great burden of indebtedness hanging over our various institutions of learning, that had this first instruction been heeded, this28terrible financial distress would never have been known; and more, that our young men and women would have gone forth from these same institutions free from the apparent guilt of indebtedness, which, in many cases, has for long years hung almost like a funeral pall, not only over their heads, but over their characters as well.
And from that day to this the instruction has been repeated over and over again, “line upon line, line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little,” each time more fully, more explicitly, more earnestly, and more urgently than before. However, we have, at least until recently, been moving but slowly.
Many of our schools are now located in the country, on tracts of land more or less extensive, under far more favorable conditions than those under which our older and larger institutions of learning were established; and the idea of real reform along the lines of true higher education is assuming larger and larger proportions. And, praise the Lord, we can see the strongest evidences in the schools, as well as in this convention, that from this time forward these three great branches of our educational work will move forward in steady lines, and in a direct proportion to their relative value.
Our industrial schools have begun, as they should, at the lower round of the ladder, and are mounting toward its summit round by round. The work is cumulative, broad, and extensive and since the work has begun in a really practical way, I am now prepared to say that the wave is rolling with a rapidity, a strength, and a volume, such that no one of us need be ashamed, but, on the contrary, encouraged to take up this work with renewed vigor, zeal, and energy until the close of probationary time.