shaw SCHOOL GARDEN WORK 73 



work lie almost entirety in thought for the small things? As 

 our children enter the garden house for a session each child registers 

 his attendance for himself. A large calendar hangs directly over 

 the registration sheets, yet it sometimes takes almost an entire 

 summer before a given child will cease asking the keeper of the 

 house whether it be a teacher or an older boy or girl, the date, 

 I might add here that he is never told the date. This is a little 

 thing, and yet all through life we meet these people who are 

 constantly depending on others for the simplest things. After 

 registering the child goes straight to the bulletin board to read the 

 directions for the day. He does not stop first and choose his tools, 

 but chooses them according to what the day's work is to be, set 

 forth on the bulletin board. This is a small point but it is training 

 in taking a direction and putting it into effect. 



We have made it our business to see that the beginners in the 

 garden cover certain lessons which are fundamental in gardening, 

 such as learning how to plant different kinds of crops, spacing, 

 thinning, transplanting, cultivating, a caring for paths and beds, 

 cleaning cf tools, winding up of measuring cords neatly and efficient- 

 ly. These beginners lessons once learned are a basis for advanced 

 nature work. It is just as stupid to keep teaching children 

 the same garden lessons as it would be to teach the same lessons 

 on fractions for four years. The only point of learning a lesson is 

 either for mental training or to give information to put to w r ork 

 or both. Our tool house we keep as immaculate as a parlor and 

 at the beginning of the season and sometimesallthroughtheseason, 

 tools are inspected before they are hung up. Each person must 

 clean and hang up his own tools. We rarely ever have a tool 

 put anywhere but in its own place. This comes from training 

 and from standards. 



The older boys and girls plant their gardens entirely from their 

 own plans taking them into the garden with them; then as the sea- 

 son goes on they check up the errors in judgment they have made. 

 The plans are discussed with them both before and after they are 

 made. Most always they see radical mistakes but very often 

 smaller mistakes are permitted to go through in order that the 

 boy or girl may benefit from his mistake and not from information 

 given him by a teacher or obtained from a book, although both 

 of these sources are permissible checks. The school garden 



