THE RELATION WHICH SCHOOL-GARDENS MAY BEAR 

 TO INDUSTRIAL AND COMMERCIAL GEOGRAPHY 



BY AMOS W. FARNHAM 

 State Normal and Training School, Oswego, N. Y. 



[Read before the Section of Earth Science, New York State Science Teachers' 

 Assn., Dec. 27, 1906.] 



Many of our leading educators recognize school-gardens as 

 a valuable means of instruction in elementary schools. Many 

 of our leading cities have made provision for school-gardens ; 

 and many teachers have found that they contribute not alone 

 to successful teaching, but to successful class-management as 

 well. Many children have found school work more congenial, 

 and the schoolroom and school grounds more attractive because 

 of their experience in, and the products of the school-gardens. 

 The popularity of school-gardens is shown by frequent contribu- 

 tions to educational magazines, contributed by enthusiastic ad- 

 vocates and read by teachers no less enthusiastic. Also their 

 popularity is often shown by programs of educational meetings 

 in which school-gardens receive at least "honorable mention." 

 Occasionally a normal school indorses the school-garden idea in 

 a practical way, and in its annual report gives large, illustrated 

 paragraphs on the subject. The United .States Department of 

 Agriculture, realizing that school-gardens are an important and 

 almost necessary means of instruction, has recently issued a 

 pamphlet of forty pages in which the value of school-garden 

 work is discussed. (This pamphlet is called "The School Gar- 

 den," and is known as Farmers' Bulletin, No. 218). In the 

 President's message, under the heading, "Farming a Profes- 

 sion," the President says: 



"In all education we should widen our aims. It is a good thing to pro- 

 duce a certain number of trained scholars and students, but the education 

 superintended by the state must seek rather to produce a hundred good citizens 

 than merely one scholar, and it must be turned now and then from the class 

 book to the study of the great book of nature itself * * * All students 

 now realize that education must seek to train the executive powers of young 

 people and to confer more real significance upon the phrase, 'dignity of labor,' 

 and to prepare the pupils so that, in addition to each developing in the highest 



