The School Garden as a Center for the 

 Teaching of Nature-Study 



R. O. Joiixsox 



Head Department of Biology and Agriculture, State Normal 

 School, Chico, Cal. 



Among a number of reasons why, as it appears to me, the 

 school garden should be made the center for the teaching of 

 nature study is that man in a garden is. par excellence, at the 

 meeting point or focus of all the forces with which he has to do. 

 and the child in the garden (a little world in itself) is placed 

 on a battle ground of opposing natural forces which are identical 

 in kind and behavior with those which he must necessarily meet 

 in his subsequent life. What better place than a garden (a 

 little world of its own) can be thought of as a schooling-place 

 for the boy and the girl, the future man and woman? Our 

 first parents in the childhood. of the race were put to school in 

 a garden as a preparation for the later life and directed to dress 

 it and subdue it and make it to bring forth fruit for sustenance. 

 The garden seems thus early to have been considered an ideal 

 place for the most profitable sort of education possible for man. 

 namely, an education which fits him successfully for the work 

 of turning Nature's forces to his own account. Now one of 

 the most comprehensive, widely accepted of present day aims 

 for the teaching of nature study is such a preparation of the 

 child through the study of nature as will enable him to deal in 

 a masterful way with the forces of nature, thwarting the bad, 

 assisting the good, and turning all to his own advantage. Wt 

 see therefore that what nature study alms at. the work of garden- 

 ing does, hence the value of making the school garden the center 

 for the nature study work. 



Furthermore there is, to my mind, nothing, which, for the 

 child, better combines the serious and the ])leasurable and to 

 such a degree, as does the work done in the school garden, and 

 this notwithstanding the fact that pupils can and should be made 

 to understand and appreciate what constitutes an honest hour's 

 work with the hands. Nature study learned by the doing of 

 actual work in the garden gives pleasure largely because it 

 afifords a means of combining learning with pleasant activity, 

 gardening being in itself a health-giving out-of-door exercise. 

 Not a little of the pleasure derived from nature-study so tau2[ht 

 is that which comes from merely seeing things grow. This 



