Experience in practical life is indispensable. Order, thoroughness, punctuality, self-control, a sunny temper, evenness of disposition, self-sacrifice, integrity, and courtesy are essential qualifications for teachers. Education p. 277.The teaching is incomplete if held just in the classroom with textbooks. Several hours a day should be spent working with the students in some line of manual training. In no case should this be neglected. When the kids finish high school they should have a trade under their belt that will give them employment. An agriculture teacher who has captured the traits listed above will sense a refreshing spiritual warmth and a peculiar efficiency that gets results. The results are superb crops and character development in their students. The student feels warmth towards the teacher winning their loyalty and fine cooperation. It furnishes a powerful motivation. It stimulates student confidence in the teacher. It teaches the dignity of labor. It develops a high regard for order and thoroughness and provides daily opportunities for developing a friendly camaraderie, which provides a natural and an informal counseling situation that is most effective. The influence of such a teacher is everlasting, and it draws the teacher and students closer to Nature’s great Creator. This budding friendship provides golden opportunities for molding the student spiritually and for assisting them in the development of a sterling character and high and noble ideals leading to royalty. The teacher becomes an open textbook. The teacher who is orderly, punctual, thorough, and well organized wields on the students a lasting influence that spells success. In summary, according to Mittleider and Nelson’s book “Food for Everyone”, this agricultural work-study program produces students of character obtaining keen observation skills, producers instead of consummers, an understanding of the importance of order and thoroughness, students who can pay steady attention to the work at hand, students who learn how to plan and get results, students who overcome obstacles, students who cut out waste motions and know how to improvise to get things done in a minimum of time, students who are sympathetic with the world’s workers. Farmer McGregor as your teacher can inspire you with interest in, and respect for, manual labor that is highly elegant, making royal students by the hand of his teacher, God. The habits and principles of the farmer should be considered of even greater importance than his literary qualifications…In order to exert the right influence, the farmer should have perfect control over oneself, and their own heart should be richly imbued with love for the students, which will be seen in the teacher’s looks, words, and acts. The teacher should have firmness of character, and then the teacher is ready to mold the minds of the students, as well as instruct them in the sciences. CT p. 77. The idea that work is a drudgery and degrading seems to be ingrained in most peoples around the world. Somehow the feeling persists that only certain people should work–that work is for servants and students and not for masters and teachers, or professionals. This concept has gone so far in some parts of the world that it even degrades womanhood into beasts of burden. Third world countries are third world countries because they think manual labor is beneath the aristocrats in society. Only the countries that value manual labor as highly important are far advanced in everything. Thousands of young people miss a great opportunity of getting acquainted with working teachers and with wholesome work. Monterey Bay Academy, Thunderbird Academy, and Laurelwood Academy were privileged to have my father as their Agriculture Professor. He understood what we are talking about here, and passed them on to his students. Many students would have highly benefited attending the schools where he taught so that they too could become excellent workers, practical and able to enhance every situation they entered. Personally as a student, I chose to make sure that I received the education that I deserved as a human being born on Planet Earth. As I already shared, I craved what the farm kids had even though they did not know or care or comprehend their privileged status. Yet, now I have come to realize that I too was a farmer’s daughter, because my father was a true farmer and wanted to help students receive the privileges that come with farming and not hoard it. He wanted them to learn to love gardening and develop characters fit for heaven, and that would help them not wilt when the blast of disaster hit. That is what my parents gifted to my three sisters and me, not a second-rate job, but a first-rate work that would help us succeed no matter what we touched. Being out in nature all day long changes character, and saves young people. My son says that it saved him, and I shared how it saved me too.