Manual Arts
When we say manual arts.... we mean WORK
Our goal is a society of free and independent people; the development of true American leaders which requires the knowledge, wisdom, common sense, “disinterestedness,” and self-reliance that the liberal arts and the manual arts created together.
At Monticello College, we call it “Liber Education.”
We believe that the manual arts are of immense value to human development, the making of leaders, and being independent.
There is no figure from history that exemplifies this better than Booker T. Washington. His autobiography, Up From Slavery, is his life’s work of creating Tuskegee University which was founded in 1881 as the Tuskegee Normal School. It is an inspirational account of how a life long work ethic, merit driven philosophy, and an appreciation for human dignity can raise any people out of poverty and slavery and is unequaled anywhere in the annals of American history.
Much of our manual arts program is modeled after what Washington accomplished.
“My experience is that there is something in human nature which always makes an individual recognize and reward merit, no matter under what colour of skin merit is found.”
– Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery – Chapter 10
“There are two ways of exerting one’s strength: one is pushing down, the other is pulling up.”
– Attributed to Booker T. Washington
Here are just a few ways in which we teach working hard:
- Use of garden hand tools
- Green housing and aquaponics
- Raising and planting seedlings
- Weeding and watering crops and gardens
- Horticulture
- Arboriculture/orchard management
- Food harvesting, preservation, and storage
- Feeding, caring for, and reproduction of farm animals
- Butchering livestock
- Permaculture
- Biodynamics
- Blacksmithing
- Vermiculture (keeping worms)
- Apiculture (beekeeping)
- Firearm safety and use
- Culinary Arts (organic, whole foods preparation)
- Soil building, preparation, and maintenance
- Edifice construction: standard and alternative
- Energy production: solar, wind, and passive means of heating and cooling
- Primitive and self-sufficiency skills
The desire to recreate an environment for a liber education is what led us to build our campus in a little-known region of southeastern Utah—a place where we can study hard, work hard, and play hard—to build New American Founders.
