Will School-Gardening Survive? 



H. M. Benedict 

 Professor of Botany and Head of Biology Dept., University of Cincinnati 



(Address given before the School-Gardening Association of America, 

 December 31, 1912, at Cleveland, Ohio.) 



The insertion of another subject into the crowded mental menu 

 of the schools is inexcusable unless the new subject unquestionably 

 serves a purpose which the present ones do not. Is, then, the 

 introduction of gardening worth while to the child? 



I take it that our presence here indicates our emphatic belief that 

 it is worth while. 



Having accomplished its introduction, do we wish it to remain a 

 permanent part of child training? 



I hope that this is the earnest desire of everyone connected with 

 this movement and I particularly pray that each one of us has 

 looked far enough into the future to realize that the introduction of 

 school-gardening will be shortly followed by its extinction if the 

 gardens do not show the promised results. 



What is the menace to its strrvival which we should foresee and 

 prepare to combat ? 



Let us look at something not so^ close to our hearts as this school- 

 garden movement, let us turn to something far enough away to pre- 

 sent a true perspective and to permit of an unbiased judgment. 



When a lad I visited the region between the rich farming belt of 

 the Missouri valley and the semi-arid sage brush plains adjoining 

 the Rocky mountains. This mid-region was an inland empire of 

 millions of acres of fertile soil, warmed by the bright western sun- 

 light and watered by rains. It possessed the natural qualifications 

 required for human habitation and prosperity. But at the time 

 when I visited it, in every direction for literally hundreds of miles, 

 stretched abandoned fields desolate with weeds, the farm houses, 

 deserted, were toppling to decay and broken windmills could be 

 seen afar, standing like gaunt spectres of disaster over graves of 

 buried human hopes and ambitions. 



A decade before an army of human families, inspired by the sight 

 of the prosperous farms to the east and urged on by the unbridled 

 enthusiasm of land agents had settled upon this land, to make from 

 it each a home and a fortune. One by one they became bankrupt, 

 and although some refused to give up until fronted with actual 



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