120 STATE POMOIvOGlCAL SOCIETY. 



ing, but a large majority of them are interested. The same is 

 true of school gardening. It is also true, frequently, that some 

 pupils who care nothing for the mechanic or domestic arts find 

 gardening intensely interesting. 



In this connection it should be kept in mind that school 

 gardens are not intended to make farmers or market gardeners 

 any more than manual training courses are intended to make 

 master mechanics. They are intended rather to awaken an 

 interest in outdoor pursuits and to furnish opportunity for a 

 complete rounded development of the child's faculties. In the 

 more advanced grades is it not as reasonable to allow the 

 scholar to elect gardening (call it elementary agriculture, if you 

 will) as to allow him to elect manual training or a business 

 course ; as reasonable to teach boys some of the outdoor features 

 of home-making as to teach girls the indoor features? Scores 

 of our smaller cities depend for their very existence upon the 

 surrounding agricultural industries. Is it not as important that 

 our growing youth shall be given a knowledge of the principles 

 underlying these industries as that they be taught the ways of 

 the counting house and the factory? 



The cost of installing school gardens is merely nominal in 

 comparison with the cost of installing equipment for manual 

 training- or domestic science. The cost of the land and a few 

 hand tools is about all. The special teacher will be needed just 

 as in the other courses, but the teacher of gardening can, in 

 most cases, take charge of instruction in botany. One of the 

 great needs of the present is a corps of teachers capable of 

 carrying on such work, but the normal schools and agricultural 

 colleges are putting forth strenuous efforts to meet the demand. 

 In the meantime, progressive teachers all over our country are 

 meeting the emergency by training themselves ; that is, by 

 undertaking a limited amount of simple garden work and at the 

 same time reading everything available on the subject and 

 spending vacations in summer schools. It will not be long, 

 let us hope, before all of our best schools are giving adequate 

 attention to courses of study that will furnish our children as 

 good opportunity for coming into intimate and cordial relations 

 with Mother Nature as they now have for learning the intri- 

 cacies of man's numerous inventions. 



