Honor Labor Day now that It's Over...

How did you view Labor Day?  Was it viewed as one more vacation before summer was over or a teachable moment for your children? Sure we got out the grill and we celebrated with our friends and family because that's what Labor Day is about. It's about taking a day off from work to relax and reflect, but we need to remind our students and ourselves why Labor Day was created, to honor the history and value of hard work. 

The History of Hard Work

Employers never gave their employees a break from work. Many employees in the early 1900s worked six or even seven days a week from daylight to dark without any overtime pay or any relief from work. Where do you think the term, backbreaking work, came from?  It came from our ancestors who never had a day off, and who never had a break

Labor Day didn't come easy. It came as a result of employees saying that they deserved a break.  Employees stood up to their employers, and as a result many laws were created to help employees. Labor Day was one of those laws. 

Labor Day was created to honor hard work and hard workers, but here's the question. Does our country still see Labor Day in the same way as our ancestors?  I'm afraid that as our country gets more forgetful of its history, we will start to view Labor Day as another just another holiday. 

We have to remind our country and our children that:

• Our country is the best in the world because of hard work. 
• Labor Day is a day that honors the freedom and rights of our people to work hard for a decent wage. 
• Labor Day was created to recognize the outstanding work of our nation. 

Labor Day should remind us that our freedom hangs on our work ethic. The kryptonite of our work ethic and our freedom is called laziness and entitlement. Labor Day is a day that was earned.  It was not given to us. In order to keep it, we need to remember that we must look at work and work ethic as important and meaningful things in our society. Hard workers succeed and lazy workers fail. Lazy workers depend on others, and hard workers depend on themselves. 

This month let's preach the importance of hard work.  Let's make work a good word again. Let's make Hardwork what we aspire to do not because we're told to do it but because we know that it makes us a better person.