Rural School Le.\flet. 951 



RURAL SCHOOL-GARDENS 



In the foregoing pages we have given suggestions for gardens in 

 villages and cities. Many of these suggestions can be used in connection 

 with rural schools, but it will not be possible to organize such gardens 

 in country places. We hope that every rural school teacher will consider 

 the preceding suggestions, and use as many as she finds applicable on 

 her school grounds. 



The rural school-garden will have a character all its own. It will 

 be, in a way, a small experiment station, a place in which investigation 

 of problems interesting to the farm community in which it stands can 

 be conducted by the pupils. These problems will vary in different 

 localities. The rural school teacher should inquire what is being grown 

 on the farm lands, and with the aid of her pupils endeavor to add to 

 the knov/ledge concerning these crops. She should keep in touch with 

 departments of agriculture and current literature along these lines. 

 She should encourage pupils to conduct experiments that they may find 

 out for themselves some things that will improve the farm crops. 



Teachers who arc ready to give some time every day to gardening in 

 a rural school should prepare a connected series of lessons in soils, and 

 plants. They will find the following bulletins on agriculture, free to 

 teachers, helpful in this work: 



Reading-Course for Farmers, College of Agriculture, Ithaca, N. Y. 



Elementary Exercises in Agriculture, Office of Experiment Stations, 

 Washington, D. C. 



A Secondary Course in Agronomy, Office of Experiment Stations, 

 Washington, D. C. 



Applications of Chemistry to Agriculture, Office of Experiment Stations, 

 Washington, D. C. 



Forestry in the Public Schools, Forest Service, Washington, D. C. 



Syllabus for Secondary Schools- Agriculture, State Department of 

 Education. Albany, N. Y. 



A good agricultural textbook is Elements of Agriculture by G. F. 

 Warren, published by the Macmillan Co., New York. 



For those teachers who would like to do some work in rural school- 

 gardening and do not know how to begin, the following lessons will be 

 found helpful. They are simple and involve fundamental principles of 

 agriculture. If but one of these lessons is given during the spring- 

 time, it will be worth the while. Do not try to cover too much ground, 

 but if possible, have some one principle of agriculture demonstrated by 

 actual experiment in the vicinity of the schoolhouse. 



