Special Testimonies on Church Schools

5. Other Branches

Manual Training—This education, in felling trees, tilling the soil, erecting buildings, as well as in literature, is the education our youth should each seek to obtain. Further on, a printing-press should be connected with our school, in order to educate in this line. Tent-making also should be learned. There are also many things which the lady students may be engaged in. There is cooking, dressmaking, and gardening to be done. Strawberries should be planted, plants and flowers cultivated. This the lady students may be called out of doors to do. Thus they may be educated to useful labor. Bookbinding also, and a variety of trades, should be taken up. These will not only be putting into exercise brain, bone, and muscle, but will also be gaining knowledge. The greatest curse of our world in this, our day, is idleness. It leads to amusements merely to please and gratify self. The students have had a superabundance of this way of passing their time: they are now to have a different education, that they may be prepared to go forth from the school with an all-round education. PH081 25.2

Missionary Qualifications—The proper cooking of food is a most essential acquirement, especially where meat is not made the staple article of diet. Something must be prepared to take the place of meat, and these foods must be well prepared, so that meat will not be desired. Culture on all points of practical life will make our youth useful after they shall leave school to go to foreign countries. They will not then have to depend upon the people to whom they go, to cook and sew for them, or build their habitations. They will be much more influential if they show that they can educate the ignorant how to labor by the best methods, and to produce the best results. This will be appreciated where means are difficult to obtain. They will reveal that missionaries can become educators in teaching them how to labor. A much smaller fund will be required to sustain such missionaries, because they put to the very best use their physical powers in useful, practical labor, combined with their studies. And wherever they may go, all that they have gained in this line will give them standing room. If the light God has given were cherished, students would leave our schools free from the burden of debt. PH081 26.1

Treating the Sick—It is also essential to understand the philosophy of medical missionary work. Wherever the students shall go, they need an education in the science of how to treat the sick; for this will give them a welcome in any place, because there is suffering of every kind in every part of the world. PH081 26.2