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HORTl CULTURE 



May 4, 1907 



CERTAIN USES OF THE SCHOOL 



GARDEN. 



(A Paper Read Before the Massachusetts 

 Horticultural Society by Miss Anne 

 Wlthlngton.) 



In the conduct of my work of teach- 

 ing city children something of the art 

 of gardening, I have found much en- 

 tertainment and often much profit in 

 the casual remarks of the persons who 

 hang over the fence to view the living 

 scene. Of the contribution the city 

 school garden makes to the panorama 

 of city life I shall have more to say. 

 My reason for introducing the casual 

 observer here is that, like others who 

 take a friendly interest in the school- 

 garden movement, he usually has two 

 reasons to justify the introduction of 

 this new branch of learning into the 

 school curriculum. 



First— The moral efiect produced by 

 an acquaintance with Mother Nature. 



Second — The economic benefit to be 

 derived from teaching city children to 

 cultivate the soil. 



Now, it seems to me more Is taken 

 lor granted in these two justifications 

 than the premises warrant. It may be 

 true — and who should know better 

 than the poet? that — 



"To him who in the love of Nature holds 

 communion with her visible forms, 

 she speaks 

 A various language," 



but it cannot be affirmed that mere fa- 

 miliarity with the world of out-of- 

 doors begets understanding. We re- 

 member Wordsworth's farmer — 



"A primrose by a river's brim 

 A yellow primrose was to him 

 And nothing more." 



We recall in our own experience 

 many a farm worker who performed 

 his daily tasks as perfunctorily and 

 with as little intelligence as the most 

 machine-like of factory operatives. 



For the second reason, the number 

 of persons gaining a livelihood by ag- 

 ricultural pursuits is not likely at any 

 time in the future to be more than a 

 third of the whole population— if this 

 proportion is maintained — and any 

 technical training for this class should 

 be furnished by technical, not public 

 schools. 



We cannot justify our invasion of 

 the schools, it seems to me, unless we 

 equarely face the fact that we demand 

 from the schools some things our 

 fathers did not demand and, further, 

 that in feeling about for the instru- 

 ments whereby these things may be 

 achieved, we have come upon the 

 school garden. 



1st— The older education aimed to 

 fill the pu]fils' heads with authorita- 

 tive facts. Our ideal is the awakening 

 of the latent faculties of the child. 



2d — The so-called learned profes- 

 sions were the goal of the course of 

 study, though, of course, many fell by 

 the wayside. The medieval tradition 

 of learning being a matter of monks, 

 ■was transplanted to our shores and ap- 

 peared in Puritan guise as education, 

 even popular education being a prep- 

 aration lor the ministry. 



The modern idea Is that the public 

 school shall fit for citizenship, not for 

 a vocation, at least not the elementary 

 school, but shall so develop habits of 

 doing, habits of thinking, that any 

 vocation to which the gifts of the pu- 

 pil justify his aspiring may be worth- 

 ily filled. And further, as some edu- 

 cator has pointed out, that he may be 



fitted to survive in a world of ever- 

 changing conditions. 



3d — The schools of the past could 

 concern themselves with "book- 

 learning" solely, sale in the conscious- 

 ness that the pupils were being trained 

 in all kinds of manual arts, were 

 learning many kinds ol useful knowl- 

 edge in the home, in the fields, in the 

 workshop. Save for the knowledge 

 country children acquire on the farm, 

 all this training has passed from the 

 ken ol school children. The various 

 movements lor the introduction of 

 training in the manual arts into the 

 schools have been inspired by the con- 

 sciousness of this lack in the life of 

 the modern child. Indeed, most em- 

 phatical or unsentimental is the testi- 

 mony from some sources. Those who 

 defend the employment ol children in 

 factories and workshops declare that 

 the child needs industrial experience 

 to fit him for his future industrial life. 

 So far we can go. But more and more 

 public opinion is demanding that child 

 labor shall not be exploited for the 

 benefit of the employer, but shall bo 

 conserved in school for the benefit of 

 the child. 



We see remarkable evidences of the 

 changed attitude on the part of edu- 

 cational institutions toward the kind 

 of scientific knowledge demanded by 

 modern ii^^usliy We are told that 

 Harvard this ye^r admits applicants 

 for the degree of biiohelor of arts who 

 offer an accepted requirement in place 

 of Latin, and we read this very week 

 that that high citadel of orthodox ed- 

 ucational ideas, Oxford University it- 

 self, has established a chair of .■'igTi- 

 cultural science in recogntion of the 

 fact recently discovered by Oxford, 

 that agriculture is a science! Surely 

 with this august precedent we may 

 embark on any school garden adven- 

 ture we will. 



If, then, we can convince ourselves 

 that the printed word is not the only 

 thing with wh;ch schools may profit- 

 ably concern themselves, we may set 

 about finding out the best way to 

 teach a manual art— our gardening 

 art, for instance. Here we are con- 

 fronted with the differences in sur- 

 roundings of various schools. How- 

 ever, whether we begin with the 

 school in the crowded city, the factory 

 town, the village or the country dis- 

 trict, there are common uses to which 

 the garden may be put. It may be 

 used to teach arithmetic, geography, 

 drawing, writing, spelling. Learning 

 the multiplication table by planting 

 peas is a pleasant process. Finding 

 the area of a triangle in which one is 

 to grow radishes isn't a distasteful 

 task. When flax and hemp, winter 

 wheat and rye, tobacco and peanuts 

 are grown under our own observation 

 the pages of the geography take on a 

 new interest 



Then, too, there can be no such medi- 

 um for teaching reverence for the mir- 

 acle of nature, the renewal of life, as 

 any garden offers. The coming up of 

 the seeds, the formation of the seeds, 

 the needs of the plant, the kinship of 

 the vegetable and animal world afford 

 many opportunities for the intelligent 

 and sympathetic teacher to influence 

 the child profoundly. 



Moral instruction need, not be a dis- 

 mal matter. All the preachments in 

 the world cannot illuminate the sub- 

 ject of regard for the rights of others 

 as does one half hour's work in a 



school garden. Correct habits of work 

 can be taught in any garden. "They 

 can fool you in the school room," said 

 one of the Boston masters to me, as 

 we watched the children at work, "but 

 out here in the garden we can see 

 whether they know or not." 



All these things can be taught with 

 like profit in any school garden. In 

 some other respects the methods em- 

 ployed may be adapted to various ends. 

 The country school garden might serve 

 as a model for the community. No 

 one familiar with our country towns 

 in New England will deny that such 

 a garden attached to the country 

 school might be ol inestimable service 

 in calling attention to new ways of 

 doing things, new plants, new varie- 

 ties, new ideas. Such I am told is the 

 purpose of some of the school work 

 in Tennessee, where one of the county 

 school superintendents is striving to 

 base the school work on agriculture, 

 which is the prevailing industry of 

 the community. This, of course, is the 

 theory on which Hampton and Tuske- 

 gee Institutes have been so censpicu- 

 ly successful. 



Then, in the village school we can 

 see opportunities lor making the gar- 

 den of economic and aesthetic value. 

 Much of the work of the village im- 

 provement societies has centred about 

 the village school. Its grounds have 

 been planted, its school rooms 

 adorned. Why should the school not 

 offer a place lor learning how best to 

 plant a small garden? How to obtain 

 a succession of blossoming flowers? 

 How colors should be arranged? How 

 to plant ugly spots with vines and 

 shrubs? 



Then the factory town. Here we find 

 ourselves confronted with the bare 

 modern industrial problem which un- 

 derlies all our efforts to make this a 

 better and more lovely world to live in. 

 I shall never forget the effect pro- 

 duced upon me by the sight of the lit- 

 tle gardens in Fall River at the time 

 of the strike in the cotton mills two 

 years ago. The Portuguese operatives 

 retain their love of the cultivation of 

 the soil in spite of their factory life, 

 and they have a habit of clubbing to- 

 gether and hiring a tract of land on 

 which they grow garden truck. At the 

 time of my visit, in mid-summer, 

 these Portuguese, although among the 

 poorest paid of the operatives, were 

 able to withstand the long strain of 

 the strike with less suffering than the 

 better paid workers who had no gar- 

 den produce to fall back upon. How- 

 ever, the entire absence of violence In 

 any form during this strike was doubt- 

 less largely due to the fact that the 

 farmers of the surrounding country 

 brought in food supplies almost dally 

 to contribute to the townspeople In 

 distress. This has always seemed to 

 me a striking illustration of the 

 imperative need for systematic efforts 

 to get the industrial population into 

 closer relation to the soil. The fac- 

 tory town often offers opportunities 

 for individual garden plots, and many, 

 if not most, of the factory operatives, 

 are country bred. The school in such 

 a town can contribute in large meas- 

 ure to the economic welfare — incident- 

 ally to the aesthetic benefit of the com- 

 munity by encouraging gardening 

 efforts. 



The city school garden meets needs 

 unknown to suburban or rural dis- 

 tricts. It is often the means of first 



