Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 August 1877 — Education as it May Affect Labor. [ARTICLE]

Education as it May Affect Labor.

The proportion of people who are contented with their daily avocations is, we think, small as compared with those who are not. The difficulty of procuring other employment; a distrust of their ability to make themselves useful therein, or a languid clinging to the bird in the hand rather than a pursuit of the bird in the bush, prevents many from abandoning their present occupation, which they may detest, for another which they fancy would prove more agreeable. There are others who, from a species of diffidence which seems always to deter them from turning passing opportunities to any personal advantage, plod on from year to year in pursuits very distasteful, and for which they are by nature quite unsuited. There is still another class, whose conceit is far more prominent than their merits; who, in their own estimation, are never appreciated; who receive but cruel, neglectful treatment on all sides; who whine at the deg'adation of the drudgery to which they seem to gravitate, and who are choked with regrets that misfortunes have placed in other fields the masterly efforts of which they affect to believe themselves capable. There is yet another class —the Rolling Stone—the Jack of-all-trades. Happy and useful while there are odd jobs to be done, the doing ot which reflects credit upon their ingenuity—miserable and useless when, having tinkered the tea-kettle, repaired the pumps and the plow, there is naught remaining but the steady, hard work of the farm. There are other" classes, which need not be particularized, that, as a convict expiates in prison his crime against the law, can find in labor only the detestable means of procuring their bread and clothes.

Since man is so constituted that he must labor a considerable share of his time in order to enjoy leisure, it is a pity that he cannot so interest himself in such labor as to render it also a source of enjoyment. What we call pleasure is, aficr all, only the privilege of selecting our labor and of discontinuing it when we choose. As soon, therefore, as a person is assured that his occupation is not suited to his tastes or capacities, let him hasten to change it at almost any present sacrifice. The first and earliest sacrifice will be found, in the end, to be the least. We need not ever hope to pursue business as an amusement—and amusement pursued as a business, is fatal to every manly impulse. But we need not, therefore, conclude that the vigorous employ-"' ment of our hands or brains is inimical to enjoyment. Our first concern should be to perform vigorously the task which is before us, and in order to accomplish this, we must be interested in the work. This faculty of interesting ourselves in the work before us depends, in a great measure, -upon early education. ■ Children can well comprehend why they should go to school or study hard for a few hours at home. They know that nobody else can study or acquire education for them. If reluctant to learn their daily lessons, they should sternly be obliged to do so. They should be taught alike, that from this there is no possible escape—and that beyond it, nothing is required of them. The rest of tne day is theirs, and they should be permitted, in all innocent ways, to pass it as they list—to frolic and to play, the prerogative and necessity of youth,"whether in the lower or higher animal creation. But through fear of creating habits of laxiness, parents too often exact labor of their children after study hours, and thus, while yearning for play and needed recreation ; while yearning for absolute freedom which children hold so dear, they are tied to tasks in which they can feel no interest—which are sometimes beyond their feeble powers ot endurance," and which are the more repugnant in that they consume the precious hours of their liberty. This is the way to make Jack a dull lad, and to establish the very habits that it was intended to avoid—for a boy who works reluctantly is only happy when that work is finished, and he is thus tempted to slight and skim it over, that he may the sooner be released. In this way not only are habits of laziness created, but of negligence and of a deep-seated dislike of work which often clings through life and form the several classes to which, in the beginning, we have referred. The education of children, if properly conductea, is not, in after life, valuable alone as a reservoir of Isolated facts, but as a nucleus of mental power, ever inciting to original investigations and conclusions, rendering the humblest labor not destitute of an interest which the undisciplined, uncultivated mind that plods on like a horse or an ox, with little other aspiration than that of eating and sleeping, can but imperfectly experience.-— hural New Yorker.