Il8 STATE POMOLOGICAI, SOCIETY. 



found in schools where this system has been tried that to deprive 

 a neglectful pupil of his plat and give it to someone else has 

 been one of the strongest incentives to continuous and painstak- 

 ing effort. After a pupil has prepared his ground, sown his 

 seed and bestowed some little care upon the plants that have 

 come up, he very much dislikes to have the fruits of his labor 

 ■enjoyed by someone else. 



■ THE VALUE OF SCHOOE GARDEN WORK. 



School gardens increase the interest of parents in the schools 

 ^and there is need of an awakening of parental interest in this 

 direction — active, potential interest, not the passive kind. Sta- 

 tistics for 1900, published by the bureau of education, show 

 that less than seventy per cent of the children of school age in 

 the United States were enrolled in school. ^Man}- parents need 

 to be shown that the school is preparing their children, not only 

 for greater usefulness, but also for greater commercial produc- 

 tiveness. This last consideration is a very sordid one, I grant, 

 but it is, nevertheless, one that has great weight with parents 

 who toil with the hands from sun to sun, and save to the last 

 penny for the bare necessities of life, and who have never seen 

 anything but the same kind of toil ahead for their children. 

 Convince these parents that the school is preparing their chil- 

 dren for lives of less drudgery, and they will somehow provide 

 means for keeping them in school longer and more regularly. 



School gardens arouse an interest among the pupils, and thus 

 promote more regular attendance and longer continuance in 

 school. The average attendance for 1900 was less than sixty- 

 nine per cent of the total enrolment, and only forty-seven per 

 cent of the total school population. In other words, our com- 

 mon schools attained an efficiency of about forty-seven per cent. 

 More than half the children who should have been in school 

 were running the streets or working in factories. 



This condition is partly the fault of the parents, but it is also 

 largely due to the lack of interest in school work on the part of 

 the pupils. If the pupil is really anxious to be in school he will 

 usually find a way, and he will also find a strong public senti- 

 ment to encourage him. On the other hand, it is very easy for 

 the pupil who has lost interest to invent excuses for staying out 

 of school a dav or two, a week, or for dropping out altogether. 



