The Lesson of Work ~ Catholic Teacher’s Companion

This is an excerpt taken from a treasure of a book published in 1924 called The Catholic Teacher’s Companion – A Book of Inspiration and Self-Help.

As we are all teachers in some form or other, this article is valuable.

It was originally written for teaching Sisters….

THE LESSON OF WORK

The motto marked upon our foreheads, written upon our doorposts, channeled in the earth, and wafted upon the waves is and must be: “Labor is honorable and idleness dishonorable.” — Thomas Carlyle.

Cardinal Mercier attributes his singular attainments in ecclesiastical administration to the fact that his early teachers made him obey, work, and dare. There we have the conditions necessary not only for school discipline but for perfect education for life.

One of the chief objects of education is to train the child to love work. The child must work because it is the will of God, and must do that work for which God has called him, and for which He has given the ability needed.

It is a mistake to convert the schoolroom into a playroom as though all school work could be reduced to play. Life is not play work, and neither is virtue play work. It is just as wrong to convert all the children’s games into work as it is to reduce all their work to play.

THE HABIT OF INDUSTRY

All our pupils will have in their later life an abundance of work to do, and they should acquire during their schooldays the habit that will make them enjoy hard efforts.

 Labor ipse voluptas is but an adaptation of Menander’s famous verse, “Only strenuous labor begets abiding happiness.”

The habit of industry is often the result of natural disposition; a certain toxin in the blood makes rest difficult. But it is also the effect of training. While the habit of industry directs the instincts and talents of the boy, his time is always employed in activities of practical usefulness. He should be taught to use his talents and tastes in his recreations as well as in his studies.

Real success is won by hard, honest, persistent toil. Unless our young people get accustomed to that in school, they will have a very hard time getting accustomed to it outside.

Let the teacher, then, make her pupils realize that labor is man’s portion on earth. “Man is born to labor,” says Eliphaz to Job. “And I have found,” observes the Preacher, “that nothing is better than for a man to rejoice in his work, and that this is his portion.”

One of the chief troubles in modern life is that men and women have lost so much of their old pride and pleasure in work. It has been said that the hard-working student is out of fashion. Yet our young people are none the less eager to succeed.

A group of students asked Caruso the way to success. His answer was characteristic of the man: “Tell them they must be willing to work, to wait, and to sacrifice.”

It is an excellent formula. The hand-fed, coddled generation of today needs it badly. Only the dullards believe that “things just happen,” and only the sluggards dream that success is mainly a matter of luck or chance.

If one truth is clear in this groping world it is that temples do not build themselves, that skill does not come unbidden, and that success is not a gift but an achievement secured only by hard work.

THE CONDITION OF SUCCESS

Luck is a myth, chance plays no part in success. Whoever looks on a leader with envy merely looks at him with ignorance. For every man who attains supremacy of any kind has done something to earn it.

Paderewski was born musical—yet so were thousands of others. What made Paderewski the world’s greatest pianist was the habit he had of playing a note or phrase until he got it right—often three hundred times at a stretch.

Edison was born with a gift for mechanics; but his matchless wizardry is only his capacity for work; he can go for weeks on half the food and sleep that his helpers demand.

Beethoven, meeting deafness, went on writing music in his mind. Milton, stricken with blindness, learned to see with his soul.

All these men did things, either using a good heritage or overcoming a poor one, to an extent beyond the zeal or the courage of the many. Each thought, each act, each word of our life becomes a mosaic in the mansion of our destiny. Thus we decree our fate to ourselves.

He who shuns unusual efforts will never accomplish unusual results. There is really not much fun in doing things that are easy. The real sport is in doing the things that are hard. That is a game worth playing.

Nor is there need of extraordinary ability for playing that game. With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance all things are attainable.

It has been rightly said that true inspiration is only mental perspiration, or put slightly differently, genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent hard work.

Lowell tells us that the wise gods have put difficulty between man and everything that is worth having. But it is the very difficulty that would seem to stimulate the man made of the right stuff.

He says with Robert E. Peary, the discoverer of the North Pole, Inveniam viam aut faciam—“I shall find a way or make one”—and goes forth intrepidly to his task and work.

The powers of endurance displayed by some men are an inspiration. In a passage memorable for its beauty and pathos and truth, Stevenson gives the tale of how he worked:

For fourteen years I have not had a day’s real health; I have wakened sick and gone to bed weary; and I have done my work unflinchingly. I have written in bed, and written out of it, written in hemorrhages, written in sickness, written torn by coughing, written when my head swam for weakness; and for so long, it seems to me that I have won my wager and recovered my glove.

I am better now; have been, rightly speaking, since first I came to the Pacific; and still, few are the days when I am not in some physical distress. And the battle goes on—ill or well, it is a trifle; so as it goes.

I was made for a contest, and the Powers have so willed that my battlefield should be this dingy, inglorious one of the bed and the physic bottle. At least I have not failed, but I would have preferred a place of trumpetings, and the open air over my head.

Many another of the world’s great writers could tell a similar story of work done amid great sufferings. Some of the world’s most valued literary productions have been accomplished by their authors under circumstances of pain and hardship almost incredible.

 John Richard Green did his work in the midst of a hard battle against disease and pain. In 1869, when he was finally prostrated by the disease that had taken hold many years before, the doctors gave him no hope of living more than six months longer. Nevertheless, Green set about the task of writing his Short History of the English People, a task that he triumphantly carried to conclusion, notwithstanding racking pains.

We are assured on excellent authority that Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote the greater part of her poems confined to a darkened room, to which, by reason of her infirmities, only her own family and most intimate friends could be admitted, while she was in great weakness and almost continuous pain.

To the list of literary heroes must be added the name of Scott. Sir Walter’s manly fight against failing health and financial misfortune, during the closing years of his life, is too well known to need more than passing mention. When the commercial reverses came that left him staggering under a huge burden of debt, he, shattered in health, laboriously set to work “with wearied eyes and worn brain” to recoup.

Painfully he toiled, sometimes as many as fourteen hours a day, until the end came; but nevertheless he succeeded in meeting every penny due by reason of the huge indebtedness forced upon him.

During a large part of the forty years that Francis Parkman spent on his history, he was ill, suffering and threatened with blindness. All his documents had to be read to him. As he listened he made notes, which were read to him in turn, and from which he dictated his absorbing story of France and England in the New World—blazing, as it were, a straight road through a veritable wilderness of facts.

At times, so severe was his illness, he was allowed only five minutes for work each day; but still he worked, and discovered that by using one minute and resting the next he could prolong the five to ten, and then the ten to twenty. During all these weary years Parkman’s iron will kept not only his work, but himself and his quivering nerves under perfect control.

Sabin W. Wood says of one of her novels: “It was dictated to a stenographer while I was sitting bolstered up on a bed in the dark, with pain almost extinguishing the memory of the previous day’s dictation. It was revised in about the same way, by the aid of a friend, and wrapped up and sent to a publisher without my ever having read a chapter of it . . . It served its purpose by fostering hope until the threat of blindness which hung over me was removed.”

If it is true that it takes more courage to endure than to act, then the palm must be awarded to these writers who did both, for they worked and suffered.

The teacher may therefore propose them as examples to the children to inspire them to make a brave beginning of their lifework. It is the first step that counts. A work begun is half done.

Still the teacher should not demand too much of the children in the beginning. No great thing is created suddenly. It is well for one not to try to do too much each day. To do what one can do with some honest effort, and to let the rest go without qualms or misgivings of any kind, will brighten many days in many lives.

Nor should the teacher be over-solicitous about the final results. Half our difficulty in doing anything worthy of our high calling is the shrinking anticipation of its possible consequences.

The boys may be stimulated to make greater efforts by being told that one of the great differences between childhood and manhood is that we come to like our work more than our play. But the teacher should impress upon both the boys and girls that:

If you’d succeed,
This adage mind:
First find your work;
Then work your find.

Engage in some occupation, so that the devil may always find you busy. ~ St. Jerome

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This is a unique book of Catholic devotions for young children. There is nothing routine and formal about these stories. They are interesting, full of warmth and dipped right out of life. These anecdotes will help children know about God, as each one unfolds a truth about the saints, the Church, the virtues, etc. These are short faith-filled stories, with a few questions and a prayer following each one, enabling the moral of each story to sink into the minds of your little ones. The stories are only a page long so tired mothers, who still want to give that “tucking in” time a special touch, or pause a brief moment during their busy day to gather her children around her, can feel good about bringing the realities of our faith to the minds of her children in a childlike, (though not childish), way. There is a small poem and a picture at the end of each story. Your children will be straining their necks to see the sweet pictures! Through these small stories, parents will sow seeds of our Holy Catholic Faith that will enrich their families all the years to come!

This revised 1922 classic offers gentle guidance for preteen and teenage girls on how to become a godly woman. Full of charm and sentiment, it will help mother and daughter establish a comfortable rapport for discussions about building character, friendships, obedience, high ideals, a cheerful spirit, modest dress, a pure heart, and a consecrated life.

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