bigelow] NATURE-STUDY AND MANUAL TRAINING 93 



uring rods, plant labels, envelopes and boxes for seeds, baskets for 

 the garden produce, and many simple tools useful in the garden. 



With regard to the second point, the manual training value of gar- 

 den operations, it has always seemed to me that carefully laying out 

 a garden bed and then carefully preparing the soil there ought to have 

 manual training value quite similar to that in some of the simplest 

 work with wood and metal. In most gardens the one aim of teachers 

 and pupils is to get the soil rapidly into condition for planting with- 

 out attention to how the work is done. Most plants selected for 

 school-gardens are so hardy that they will grow in beds very roughly 

 finished, and so all too commonly the loosening of the soil is the one 

 essential insisted upon, and the neatness of the finished garden is 

 likely to escape attention because seeds will grow in crooked rows and 

 in beds three feet wide at one end and two and one-half feet wide at 

 the other. From the nature-study point of view, which in this case is 

 simply concerned with growing plants, such carelessness in planting 

 might be regarded as of little importance ; but here is an opportunity 

 for manual training value, which should not be neglected. It will 

 surely add to the interest and value of the nature-study work. Pupils 

 ought to be encouraged to look with pride upon garden beds neatly 

 laid out and planted, just as they should be proud of a board neatly 

 planed or of a nail driven straight. I believe it is worth while to give 

 attention to the use of garden tools so that the pupils will learn to use 

 them properly just as in shop-work they learn the proper use of the 

 hammer, saw, etc. It seems to me that in the lines which I have 

 indicated there are manual training values in close connection with the 

 nature-study of the school-garden which deserve to be worked out bet- 

 ter than even the few exceptionally progressive schools have so far 

 clone. 



In adjusting nature-study and manual training in a plan for cor- 

 relation some interesting problems come forward. In some schools 

 manual training is the prominent subject and the attempt is to adjust 

 nature-study to the manual training. Y have seen a case where a 

 three days' visit gave me the impression that nature-study was main- 

 tained in that school in order to afford opportunity for manual train- 

 ing exercises. I have seen other schools in which there was little 

 manual training except that in connection with the nature-study. 

 Better than either of these plans, it seems to me, is to develop the 

 general outlines of both nature-study and manual training quite inde- 

 pendently so far as strict following of the fundamental principles of 



