About Labor (or Work) Day……

My dad loved his job, he was a mechanical engineer for the KLM (Royal Dutch Airline) for over 40 years; he was stationed all over the world and always talked and told stories about the different countries that he “had the privilege” – said so himself – to work in; it “was fascinating” he said, how diverse and yet so familiar it was when the work overlapped with the culture and customs of each country and how this was always an opportunity to learn. His journey with his passion, his work, started at a very young age at the KLM training center in The Netherlands, but quickly became his “journey” for life with my mom and us, his three daughters, as well as to his grandchildren to whom he passed on this very important value. 

In the definition of “work” we find the following description: “activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result”. In short: work is a “Purposeful activity, something we do to obtain a result”. So, what was the purpose of my dad’s work? He fixed airplanes, he worked on them in order to transport the people on that plane to their destiny, keeping them safe throughout their journeys; he took his work with the seriousness and the responsibility it called for. For him, it was not only a matter of being productive or having a good salary, it included several of his values, responsibility, ethics, expertise, service, excellence, capability, and a high level of cooperation with the team he worked with; it was all in all, a demanding but passion driven job. 

Can “Work” be considered a value? For my dad it was, for all of us as a family it was, and still is. Work is one of the fundamental ingredients of human existence; through observation, experimenting, manipulating, building or recreating (imitating) we learn to do, and through the values that encompass these activities, we learn to be better.

Maria Montessori wrote: “Now the little child who manifests perseverance in his work as the first constructive act of his psychic life, and upon this act builds up internal order, equilibrium, and the growth of personality, demonstrates, almost as in a splendid revelation, the true manner in which man renders himself valuable to the community. The little child who persists in his exercises, concentrated and absorbed, is obviously elaborating the constant man, the man of character, he who will find in himself all human values, crowning that unique fundamental manifestation: persistence in work. Whatever task the child may choose it will be all the same, provided he persists in it. For what is valuable is not the work itself, but the work as a means for the construction of the psychic man.” (Dr. Maria Montessori, ‘The Advanced Montessori Method’). Perseverance on itself is considered a value; it is not only important in our work, but it is an important value for life itself. When we model this to our children, as parents, as teachers, as significant others, they eventually will follow our lead; as Dr Montessori so often states, “the mind of the child is ‘absorbent’, it is like a sponge that takes in everything that enters its senses”, thus, perseverance in its ‘work’ will direct the child towards learning. 

“The child is by nature a worker, and when, by working in this special fashion, which is according to his nature, he can accomplish a great deal of work without ever feeling fatigue”.  (Dr. Maria Montessori, ‘Child’s Instinct to Work’, AMI Communications, 1973, 4, 9).

Maria Montessori observed that children learn through purposeful activities of their own choosing. Montessori schools call all of the children’s activities “work.” While “work” sounds like a serious endeavor, Dr. Montessori observed that children exhibit joy and experience this purposeful activity as something interesting and meaningful. In a Montessori classroom, within the prepared environment, children are taught to complete a work cycle which includes

• Choosing an activity
• Completing the activity to completion (perhaps repeating the full sequence of the activity multiple times), cleaning up and returning the materials to the proper place; and

• Experiencing a sense of satisfaction to have fully completed the task.

This calls for concentration, perseverance, and dedication, which all are necessary in the many activities that are offered in the Montessori classroom to the children of different age groups. It is safe to say that ‘work’ in the Montessori Classroom resembles a lot of aspects of what I saw in my dad growing up; there was purposeful activity, there was ‘work’, there were values and there was learning, all of which we celebrate on a day like today.

Here's a bit of History…. 

Today, “Labor Day”, pays tribute to the contributions and achievements of American workers and is traditionally observed on the first Monday in September. It was created by the labor movement in the late 19th century and became a federal holiday in 1894. In the late 1800s, at the height of the Industrial Revolution in the United States, the average American worked 12-hour days and seven-day weeks in order to eke out a basic living.

People of all ages, particularly the very poor and recent immigrants, often faced extremely unsafe working conditions, with insufficient access to fresh air, sanitary facilities and breaks.

As manufacturing increasingly supplanted agriculture as the wellspring of American employment, labor unions, which had first appeared in the late 18th century, grew more prominent and vocal. They began organizing strikes and rallies to protest poor conditions and compel employers to renegotiate hours and pay. Many of these events turned violent during this period, including the infamous Haymarket Riot of 1886, in which several Chicago policemen and workers were killed. Others gave rise to longstanding traditions: On September 5, 1882, 10,000 workers took unpaid time off to march from City Hall to Union Square in New York City, holding the first Labor Day parade in U.S. history.

On May 11, 1894, employees of the Pullman Palace Car Company in Chicago went on strike to protest wage cuts and the firing of union representatives.

On June 26, the American Railroad Union, led by Eugene V. Debs, called for a boycott of all Pullman railway cars, crippling railroad traffic nationwide. To break the Pullman strike, the federal government dispatched troops to Chicago, unleashing a wave of riots that resulted in the deaths of more than a dozen workers.

Who Created Labor Day?

In the wake of this massive unrest and in an attempt to repair ties with American workers, Congress passed an act making Labor Day a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories. On June 28, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed it into law. More than a century later, the true founder of Labor Day has yet to be identified.