A CAPITAL IDEA 93 



The responsibility for the project "A More Beautiful Washington" 

 was assigned to the sixth grades throughout the school system. The 

 nature- study teachers taught them the facts for making a lawn; 

 keeping it in order; planning and planting both flowers and vege- 

 table gardens. The children were directed to repeat these lessons 

 to every class in their respective buildings beginning with the 

 kindergarten children. The sixth grade teachers realizing the 

 opportunity for practice in oral English most heartily co-operated 

 in the preparation of the talks. Naturally the children were enthu- 

 siastic about taking the part of a teacher, especially to grades 

 higher than their own. They plead for 100% clean playgrounds, 

 lawns and streets. They emphasized the privilege that Washing- 

 ton children have through living at the capital and the return they 

 could make to the rest of the nation by keeping it clean and 

 beautiful for them when they visited it. At the close, they wrote 

 concise reports of what the building had accomplished and sent 

 them to one of the daily papers which published several hundred. 

 One of these reports follows: 



REPORT OF CLEAN-UP AND GARDENING BY THE KETCHAM SCHOOL. 

 READ BY THE CHAIRMAN OF THE COMMITTEE IN ASSEMBLY. 



You remember when the sixth grade told you to fix your lawns, 

 flower and vegetable gardens. We afterwards asked you some 

 questions to see if you really had tried to do what we had asked you to 

 do. One of these questions was "How many of you have kept off 

 of your own lawns?" Some of you haven't any lawns so this means 

 to you, to keep off your neighbor's lawn and the school lawn. 

 We also asked "How many had picked up rubbish?" This means 

 not only in the schoolyard but in your own yard. 



The sixth grade children gathered and tabulated these answers 

 and I will now give you the results. 



We find that 57% of us have gardens. 81% of us respect our 

 neighbor's lawns proving that we are good citizens. I presume 

 that the same people did not throw paper on the playgrounds as 

 I find the percentage the same. There are seven-eights of us 

 that kept off the school lawn. I presume that the other eighth 

 are the ones that always give the teachers trouble on the outside. 

 Five-eights of us have cleaned our lawns; probably the rest have 

 no lawns to clean. Three-fifths of our good citizens have desired 



