Working With the Hands / Being a Sequel to "Up from Slavery," Covering the Author's Experiences in Industrial Training at Tuskegee

by Booker T. Washington

In this connection I have often thought that missionaries in foreign countries would make greater progress if at first more emphasis were placed upon the industrial and material side than upon the purely spiritual side of education. Almost any heathen family would, I believe, appreciate at once the difference between a shack and a comfortable house, while it might require years to make them appreciate the truths of the Bible. Through the medium of the home the heart could be reached. Not long ago I was asked by a missionary who was going into a foreign field what, in my opinion, he ought to teach the people, and how he ought to begin. I asked him what the principal occupation of the people was among whom he was going, and he replied that it was the raising of sheep. I advised him, then, to begin his missionary work by teaching the people how to raise more sheep than they were raising and better sheep, and said that I thought the people would soon decide that a man who could excel them in the raising of sheep might also excel them in the matter of religion, and that thus the foundation for effectual mission work might be laid.

The first few students of our school came largely from the farming districts. The earliest need at the Tuskegee School was food for teachers and students. I said: "Let us raise this food, and while doing so teach the students the latest and best methods of farming." At the same time we could teach them the dignity and advantages of farm life and of work with their hands. It was easy to see the reasons for doing this, and easy to resolve to do it, but I soon found that there were several stubborn and serious difficulties to be overcome. The first and perhaps the hardest of these was to conquer the idea, by no means confined to my race, that a school was a place where one was expected to do nothing but study books; where one was expected not to study things, but to study about things. Least of all did the students feel that a school was a place where one would be taught actually to do things. Aside from this, the students had a very general idea that work with the hands was in a large measure disgraceful, and that they wanted to get an education because education was something which was meant to enable people to live without hand work.

In addition to the objections named, I found that when I began to speak very gently and even cautiously to the students about the plan of teaching them to work on the farm, two other objections manifested themselves with more or less emphasis. One was that most of the students wanted to get out of the country into a town or a city, and the other that many of them said they were anxious to prepare themselves for some kind of professional life, and that they therefore did not need the farm work. The most serious obstacle, however, was the argument that since they and their parents for generations back had tilled the soil, they knew all there was to be known about farming, and did not need to be taught any more about it while in school.

These objections on the part of the students were reinforced by the parents of many of them. Not a few of the fathers and mothers urged that because the race had been worked for two hundred and fifty years or more, now it ought to have a chance to rest. With all of my earnestness and argument I was unable in the earlier years of the school to convert all the parents and students to my way of thinking, and for this reason many of the students went home of their own accord or were taken home by their parents. None of these things, however, turned the school aside from doing the things which we were convinced the people most needed to have done for them.

I shall always remember the day when we decided actually to begin the teaching of farming—not out of books, but by real and tangible work. In the morning I explained to the young men our need of food to eat, and the desire of the school to teach them to work with their hands. I told them that we would begin with the farm, because that was the most important need. The young men were greatly surprised when the hour came to begin work to find me present with my coat off, ready to begin digging up stumps and clearing the land. As my first request was more in the form of an invitation than a command, I found that only a few reported for work. I soon learned, too, that these few were ashamed to have any one see them at work. After we had put in several hours of vigorous toil I noticed that their interest began to grow, because they came to realise that it was not my farm they were helping to cultivate, but that it belonged to the school, in which we all had a common interest. The next afternoon a larger number reported for duty. They were still shy about having any one see them at work, however, and were especially timorous at the idea of being caught in the field by the girl students.

Gradually, year by year, the difficulties which I have enumerated began to melt away, but not without constant effort and very trying embarrassments. It soon became evident that the students had practical knowledge of only one industry, and that was the cultivation of cotton in the manner in which it had been grown by their fathers for years. Another defect soon became evident, and that was that they had little idea of caring for tools or live stock. Plows, hoes, and other farming implements were left in the field where they were last used. If quitting time came when the hoe was being used in the middle of a field or at the end of a row, the tool remained there over night. Where the last plowing in the fall was done, there the plow would most likely spend the winter. No better care than this was given to wagons or harness, and mules and horses shared this impartial neglect.

It was the custom in the earlier days of the school—as it is now—for students and teachers to assemble in the evening for prayers. After considerable ineffective effort to teach the students to put their implements away properly at night, I caused a mild sensation at evening prayers by calling the names of three students who had left their implements in the field. I said that these three students would be excused from the room to attend to this duty, and that we would not proceed with the service until their return, and that I felt sure they would be more benefited by prayer and song after having done their work well than by leaving it poorly done. A few lessons of this kind began to work a notable betterment in the care with which the students looked after their implements, and attended to other details of their daily round.

THE REPAIR SHOP
All of the broken furniture of the school is mended here