The father and mother have so often complained of their work,
in the presence of their children, that all work comes to assume the
aspect of a hardship, if not a penalty. It often happens, too, that the
parents encourage their children to think that education affords
immunity from work, and the children attend school with that notion
firmly implanted in their minds. They seem to think that when they have
achieved an education they will receive their reward in the choicest
gifts that Fortune has to bestow, and that their only responsibility
will be to indicate their choices.
=Misconceptions of work.=--Still further, when children enter school
imbued with this conception of work, they feel that the work of the
school is imposed upon them as a task from which they would fain be
free. If their parents had only been as wise as Tom Sawyer and had set
up motives before them in connection with their home activities and thus
exalted all their work to the plane of privilege, the work of the school
would be greatly simplified. It is no slight task to eradicate this
misconception of work, but somehow it must be done before the work of
the school can get on. Until this is done, the work of the school will
be done grudgingly instead of buoyantly, and work that is done under
compulsion is never joyous work. Nor will work that is done under
compulsion ever be done in full measure, as the days of slavery clearly
prove.
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