Читать книгу Constructing the Self. Essays on Southern Life-Writing онлайн

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Once enrolled at Hampton, Washington came under the sway of its principal General Samuel C. Armstrong, who had developed a curriculum emphasizing education in both the classroom and the workshop. Perhaps the most important thing that Washington learned at Hampton, as he notes in Up From Slavery, is the dignity of manual labor. Washington repeatedly attacks those who believe that the primary goal of education is to deliver people from manual work. For Washington, education should prepare people for productive labor, whatever the profession. Labor done well not only increases one’s earning potential, it also fosters self-improvement and enrichment. Describing his own growth through productive labor at Hampton, Washington observes:

I not only learned that it was not a disgrace to labour, but learned to love labour, not alone for its financial value, but for labour’s own sake and for the independence and self-reliance which the ability to do something which the world wants done brings. At that institution I got my first taste of what it meant to live a life of unselfishness, my first knowledge of the fact that the happiest individuals are those who do the most to make others useful and happy. (73-74)