97 
etc. Sundays go round city, wander round streets. Other days 
go down to freight yards and jump freights. We snow ball Jews 
who come to slaughter house to get food. All of us smoke. 
Get lager beer Saturday nights off beer wagons, gamble with 
dice, shoot craps.” I am quoting: “Three of the boys in this 
gang were in reform school before they were fifteen years old.” 
We no longer attempt to control such activities by “ don’ts.” 
Instincts must be developed along right lines. School gardens 
are a valuable means of directing the human instincts into proper 
channels to activity. | 
_ 6, Some people are much concerned about what they call the 
' regular work of the school. Judging school work by Plato’s 
definition and by the root meaning of the word there are many 
things that may be called school work beside the three R’s. 
I have a definition of my own for school work. “ School work 
is the work done in and through the school that has for its 
object the training and development of the body, mind, and char- 
acter of children.” 
I think no less of the value of arithmetic and geography and 
English as school subjects because I believe in school gardens 
as a means of .education. 
These subjects must be taught and well taught, better taught 
in fact than formerly, we are told by business men. In order to 
teach them better there must be subject matter with which to 
do it. 
Is it not quite as good arithmetic to compute the per cent. of 
income on a known investment in seeds, and fertilizer, and labor, 
and tools as to compute the per cent. of profit and loss on a 
cargo of cotton when the pupil has never seen raw cotton? 
Is it not as good geography to trace the potato crop from the 
place of production over the highways of commerce to the points 
of distribution and consumption as to take an imaginary trip 
through the Sahara desert? 
Let a boy or a girl describe his garden as a lesson in English 
and he will write a better composition than he will in describing 
the Rocky mountains, about which he knows only vaguely. 
One need not think any less of the need of teaching well the 
