CROMWELL] SHOULD SCHOOL GARDENS SURVIVE? 31 



make it worth while and then is distributed to the different famiHes 

 represented in the school, this makes a community interested in 

 the school garden and it makes the work worth while for the 

 country children. 



Suppose again that the teacher gets permission and goes with 

 the interested pupils into a near-by potato field, in September 

 and there marks the hills with the most vigorous and blight resist- 

 ant tops and suppose she follows this up at seeding time and has 

 the hills forked out and saves seed from hills with six or more 

 good sized and good shaped potatoes in each. Suppose she plants 

 these in the school garden, has them well cared for and then 

 distributes seed from all but those hills that she needs for the 

 next year, this is worth while and makes the school garden a place 

 of perennial interest. Or again, suppose she selects the best heads 

 from blight and rust resistant plants in the wheat or oat field 

 and multiplies them in the school garden, this may make the 

 garden well worth while. She may have the pupils in one grade 

 breed radishes, in another grade lettuce, in another grade some 

 •other garden vegetable and then the boys in the upper grades 

 breed the grains while the girls breed flowers or take a hand in 

 breeding an improved garden vegetable from the demands of the 

 kitchen for better flavor, more nutrition or more attractive ap- 

 pearance. There is danger of untrained teachers in their enthus- 

 iasm for something new, wasting much time and deadening inter- 

 est in scientific agriculture by doing things that are not worth 

 doing. Of course there is great need that the rural school help 

 give the country child his racial heritage. There is a demand that 

 the country child be made conscious of and be given tact and skill 

 in handling or applying laws and principles but these may be 

 taught to the child who spends most of his time on the farm, with- 

 out the means of the school garden. The laws of averages, of 

 variation, of mutation, of the survival of the fittest, of natural 

 selection, of capillarity, of conservation of soil moisture, of like 

 tends to beget like, and others are a part of the child's racial herit- 

 age which he should be given so far as he can assimilate them 

 so that they may become the basis for his reasoning in later life. 

 Now, if the school garden helps to make these clear, in so far it 

 should survive as a school device for teaching. But I believe 

 that in plant breeding is to be found the great function of the 

 .school garden in the country. We are far behind Europe in plant 



