WORK AS A FACTOR IN EDUCATION

The need of the times is the creation in the minds of boys and girls of a proper attitude toward work. At present the average boy knows but little about real labor, and his aim is to avoid it. Indeed, he has been taught by his elders that the chief purpose of his schooling is to prepare him to make a living without work, and his aim is to enter some vocation where little manual labor is required. This attitude toward work has caused such a tremendous movement from the country to the town and city that the very foundation of our social institutions is threatened. The movement toward the education of the masses without changing our educational system to meet their conditions and needs, has tended to fill them with the ideals of the old system, and this has resulted in the growth of a great host of professional and semi-professional men who have a false attitude toward the world's work and whose chief purpose is to make a living without work. There are thousands of men in our towns and cities to-day eking out a miserable existence, of no use to themselves or to anyone else, who would have made useful members of society had they been trained to have a proper conception of labor. They have been trained to think it degrading to work with their hands, and they would rather undergo any kind of hardship than put on their overalls and go into the workshop, to the farms, or into the factory.

The feeling of contempt for labor has influenced women even more than men. The average woman has no proper conception of work and feels that manual labor is degrading. In many cases her training has led her to believe that it is her part to have a good time and that others must minister to her wants and even to her whims. The average girl knows nothing about work because her

mother, laboring under a wrong conception, has done all the work around the home in order to give her daughter time to devote to her music and other studies. The daughter, from the beginning, is freed from all responsibility; no wonder that when she comes into a home of her own she has no proper conception of her part in helping to carry its burdens. Mother has shielded her from responsibility during her girlhood; no wonder that she expects her husband to do the same during her womanhood. The sad part is that, in the great majority of cases, the husband is not able to do this; and thousands of women, brought up to shirk responsibility and to have a good time, are compelled, when they come into homes of their own, to do their own work, and, not having been trained to have a proper conception of it, live miserable lives, feeling that they are doing that which is unworthy of them. This would not be the case if the work idea were given a more prominent place in our schools and our girls were compelled to do work, and to have a proper attitude toward it. The greatest weakness of our schools is the lack of definiteness. This weakness is shown nowhere more forcibly than in their failure to train the girls for the work they will have to do when they come into practical life. While about 95 per cent of them will sooner or later become homemakers and have to meet the responsibilities of wifehood and motherhood, their school course seems to be laid out wholly with a view to their enjoyment of their leisure. Music, literature, and art have their places in the education of girls, but they do not belong in the same class with domestic science and art, or training for homemaking. Everything in the girl's course should prepare her for the work she is going to do. It should all be arranged with a view to giving her a proper attitude toward her work; for whether she

loves her work in the world or not will depend upon the ideals instilled in her mind in the schools. If our girls in school were trained to love work and to have a proper attitude toward it, cooking, sewing, and the care of home and children would be as fascinating to them as those things in which they now take pride. Not only this: they would be better physically, mentally, and morally. They would be happier, and would make everybody around them happier. They would make their homes brighter, happier, and more prosperous, and would restore them to their proper place as the bulwarks of our civilization.

EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY OF JESUS

Manual activity not only develops mental and moral strength, but it develops character in the highest sense of the term by putting our ideals in the proper plane. It was not without reason that the Great Teacher said, "He is greatest who is the servant of all." He had a deeper insight than any other man into human character and knew better than others what it takes to develop it. He understood better the great secret moral forces of the universe and saw that the ability and willingness to serve was at the bottom of all true growth. He realized that such an educational philosophy as that of Plato would lead to weakness of body, mind, and soul, and he set over against it his ideal of greatness through service. His reply to the world's philosophy of selfishness was that "even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many."

After ninteen hundred years we are just beginning to understand this philosophy of Jesus. So deeply was the opposite conception imbedded in the minds of men that it

has taken and will yet take a long time to remove it. It is hard for us to realize that the lord of creation is the man who works with his hands in a service of love for others. For some time we have realized that work with the hands develops physical strength; we are just beginning to realize that it also develops mental and moral strength; and here comes the Great Teacher to tell us that it also gives us mastery of spiritual forces and makes us lords of creation: "He that would be greatest, let him be the servant of all." Not until we thoroughly understand this philosophy, and have based our institutions on it, shall we attain the highest conceptions of life. We can see now the emptiness of the ancients' conception that he is greatest who has at his mercy the greatest number of human lives. We no longer regard Alexander as great because he ruled the world; we even regard him as the weakest of men because he was unable to rule himself. We have little regard for the medieval lord whose greatness was measured by the number of his vassals. We have little sympathy with the pre-bellum conception that he was greatest who had the greatest number of slaves. In the business world we no longer tolerate the selfish business methods of a Harriman or a Rogers, and the world is against Kaiser Wilhelm for plunging it into a war to gratify his own selfish ambitions. This all goes to show what progress we have made toward the ideal that Jesus gave the world of greatness through service. But, in spite of the progress that has been made, we are far from a complete understanding of his message and farther still from an application of his ideals in practice.

It is strange that whatever progress has been madə toward this conception of greatness through service has come in spite of our educational system. Our schools

have stood in the way of such progress and have endeavored to inculcate in the minds of boys and girls the ideal of greatness through the mastery of the lives of others. They have based their work on the philosophy of Plato rather than on the philosophy of Jesus; and, if they are to become the great factors in moral progress that they should be, we must revise their work and bring it into harmony with those great moral forces that are working on the outside. The school program must be arranged so as to prepare boys and girls for lives of service. The school must teach the dignity of labor by making the workshop a part of its equipment. Boys and girls must continue to study books, but to study them, not as an end in themselves, but for what they contain that can be used in a life of practical service. In the ideal school the student will be given an opportunity to make a practical application of every idea he gains in his study or observation. He will not be required to go on day after day, month after month, or even year after year, as is now the case, without being able to test the accuracy of the knowledge he has acquired; but he will be given an opportunity to apply it as he acquires it. In the school of the future all forms of manual activity will be given a prominent place because of its importance not only in developing physical, mental, and moral strength, but in arousing the pupil's self-activity, which will bring about his complete development. Manual activity will become an important feature of the educational system of the future, because, to quote from Francis W. Parker, "the foundation of education consists in training a child to work, to love work, to put the energy of his mind and body into his work, to do that which best develops his body, mind, and soul; to do that work most needed for the elevation of mankind."