CANADIAN DEPARTMENT 



EDITED BY PROFESSOR W. LOCHHEAD 



Macdonald College, St. Anne de Bellevue, Quebec 



[All communications concerning this department should be sent to Professor 

 Lochhead at address given above.] 



GARDENING FOR SCHOOLS 



This is the title of a recent bulletin by Professor Mc Cready 

 of the Macdonald Institute, Guelph, Canada, (Bull. 152 Ontario 

 Agricultural College, December, 1906). The author is of the 

 opinion that Ontario teachers and people are not ready for the 

 formal, organized garden. He says : 'Tnvestigation on the sub- 

 ject of school-gardening throughout the province forces us to 

 the conclusion that neither the country nor the teaching profes- 

 sion is ready for undertaking it." Practically no schools, out- 

 side those under the special care and patronage of the Macdon- 

 ald Fund, have taken up the work. As to the reasons for this 

 apparent lack of interest in school-gardens. Professor Mc Cready 

 writes : 



**It is not possible to suddenly graft part of an educational system of one 

 country on to the system of a country very different. Educational systems 

 are expressions of national tendencies working through many years. They 

 are shaped by many forces, political, racial, industrial and religious. These 

 tendencies and forces leading to the introduction of such things as manual 

 training, gardening, etc., into our primary and secondary schools are not 

 acknowledged at the present time by many in our Province. Or at any rate, 

 the acknowledgment has not reached the point of adoption and establishment. 

 The truth is, there has been very recently great changes in educational aims, 

 methods and equipment, to which we have not adjusted ourselves. We will 

 probably be the better for making any new adjustment that has to be made, 

 slowly. Over zeal may work ultimately to less and slower progress than 

 guarded procedure. 



The ordinary rural school as at present constituted can not very well nor 

 wisely undertake a school-garden. The subject deserves better than hasty, 

 inconsiderate adoption. There are many difficulties to lace; there are 

 indifferent parents, antagonistic trustees, unprepared and changing teachers, 

 crowded programes of study, and the unsolved summer vacation problem. 



