30 TEANSACTIONS OF THE ILLINOIS 



houses are "public grounds," and come fully within the scope of 

 this act of the legislature. I hope therefore that when this procla- 

 mation is issued every teacher and school officer will feel that it is 

 addressed to him. Let there be a practical response to this procla- 

 mation wherever there is a group of children assembled for school- 

 ing. Let the day be emphatically the children's day. Let it be so 

 well employed in planting trees, that a hundred years hence these 

 prairies may exhibit the pleasing and the profitable results of the 

 exercise. 



It may be objected that trees planted about a school-house are 

 liable to be destroyed by children in their rough plays, and that 

 therefore the planting would be of no avail. It is in part to obviate 

 this difficulty, to overcome this destructive tendency that the plant- 

 ing is recommended. Undoubtedly in every child there is something 

 of the savage, something of a tendency to destroy merely for the 

 sake of destroying. There is also much of the spirit of carelessness 

 and disinclination to self-control. But these are the very tendencies 

 that ought to be overcome in the process of education. It is for this, 

 in a large measure, that schools are instituted. We do not wish 

 entirely to eradicate the destructive tendency in children or adults, 

 for there are some things in this world that ought to be destroyed. 

 But our education ought to teach a discrimination in this respect. 

 It ought to enable children to distinguish between that which 

 ought to be preserved and that which ought to be destroyed. And 

 it must go further than this. It must engender in the mind of the 

 child a care for those things which are worthy of preservation. Edu- 

 cation ought to overcome the recklessness of childhood and youth 

 and to substitute for it an enlightened sense of responsibility. And 

 this result the care of trees will help to accomplish. The boy who, 

 in order to preserve a tree or plant, will restrain his playful impulses, 

 that boy is learning one of the highest lessons in life. He is train- 

 ing himself to be a ruler among the storms and passions that may 

 afterwards assail him. I say that if we mean to make anything at 

 all of our schools worth thinking about we ought to include among 

 the objects of schooling this development of the self-regulating fac- 

 ulty. The objection then to tree planting, that the school children 

 may destroy them, turns out to be no objection at all. It is an 

 additional reason in favor of the practice. 



Allow me to add one other reason, very weighty, as it seems to 

 me, why children should participate in the planting and cultivation 

 of trees. It is this. The results of such labor do not appear at 

 once. It requires long waiting. From his interest in this enter- 

 prise the child learns that all worthy rewards are not immediately 

 secured, that the present must provide for the distant future. In 

 short, he learns the lesson of foresight. And are we all prepared to 

 value this lesson as it deserves? Suppose we were asked to state the 

 most conspicuous difference between the savage and the civilized 



