jarvis] POLICY CONCERNING GARDENING 175 



varied activities about the home. Our school system has not 

 conformed to the changing conditions under which people live. 



To facilitate the free choice of a vocation, children should be 

 provided with a kind of training that will acquaint them with the 

 advantages and opportunities in the chief industries. According 

 to the 1 910 census, ninety-five per cent, of our people are engaged 

 in either agriculture, industrial work, commerce, or transportation. 

 Our present system offers little opportunity for children to gain any 

 idea of the character of these predominating occupations. If our 

 boys and girls are to select from any of the occupations for which 

 our schools prepare them, they must choose one in an already 

 overcrowded field. 



To train children in habits of thrift and industry; to develop 

 stronger-bodied children; to make it possible for children to 

 remain longer in school and to escape the evils attending early 

 confinement to shops, mills and mines; to make it possible for 

 children to contribute to the support of the family while attending 

 school and to convince parents that it is worth while for children 

 to continue their school work, boys and girls should be provided 

 with interesting, wholesome and remunerative employment at an 

 early age, and while attending school. 



To supply these needs for the benefit of children in towns and 

 cities there is no more available means than that offered by pro- 

 ductive gardening. In most cities, there is abundant land in the 

 form of back yards and vacant lots that should be used for educa- 

 tional and economic purposes. Where home back yards are 

 available they should be used by the children of the family. For 

 children who live in homes without back yards or without sufficient 

 land, vacant land near the home usually may be obtained Where 

 such land is used, each child, wherever possible, should I e given a 

 piece of ground equivalent in size to an ordinary back yard or as 

 much as he or she can manage. Each of these assigned plots 

 always should be regarded as the child's home garden rather than 

 a part of a school garden. In other words, the child should assume 

 the responsibility, rather than the school. 



In the congested areas of a few of the larger cities it will be 

 difficult to find sufficient land to conduct the work on such a broad 

 basis, and, in such cases, we shall have to be satisfied with the 

 small plot idea so commonly employed at the present time. 

 Gardening on these small school plots offers an opportunity for 



