“In laying the foundation of education in labor it is dignified and education is ennobled. In such a union there is honor and strength, and long life to our institutions. For the permanence of the civil compact in this country, as in other countries, depends less upon a wide diffusion of unassimilated and undigested intelligence than upon such a thorough, practical education of the masses in the arts and science as shall enable them to secure and qualify them to store up, a fair share of the aggregate produce of labor.Today, I continue making small boxes. I am ready to hinge and assemble. I will also be preparing materials for my upcoming ESSA class on Creative Box Making.
“If this school shall appear like a hive of industry, let the reader not be deceived. Its main purpose, intellectual development, is never lost sight of for a moment. It is founded on labor, which, being the most sacred of human functions, is the most useful of educational methods. It is a system of object-teaching—teaching through things instead of signs of things. It is the embodiment of Bacon’s aphorism—“Education is the cultivation of a just and legitimate familiarity betwixt the mind and things.” The students draw pictures of things, and then fashion them into things at the forge, the bench, and the turning-lathe; not mainly that they may enter machine-shops, and with greater facility make similar things, but that they may become stronger intellectually and morally; that they may attain a wider range of mental vision, a more varied expression and be better able to solve the problems of life when they shall enter upon the stage of practical activity.”
Make, fix and create.