harvey] SCHOOL GARDENING 179 



with the eighth grade. And that one-third of our children are 

 repeaters and this due mainly to physical defects. 



Looking toward the accomplishment of this higher ideal in 

 physical and character development — Nature-Study and School 

 Gardening are demanding universal admittance to a place in the 

 graded school course of study, commensurate with their demon- 

 strated value to accomplish these ends — an accomplishment which 

 even the most loyal supporter of the common branches must 

 candidly admit. 



In the first place we may call attention to the fact that in the 

 social history of our race we find an unanswerable argument for 

 this work. The story of social evolution is fundamentally, in 

 point of cause, a story of soil culture. The hunting stage gave way 

 to the pastoral stage with the subjugation of animals. The semi- 

 barbaric life of this latter stage passed with the domestication of 

 plants and the advent of the agricultural period. Cultivation of 

 the soil was the fundamental cause in the origin and evoluion of 

 the home, village, society and civilized life, while to-day agriculture 

 is the solid warp of our social fabric whose woof is as multiple and 

 labile as the genius of man. 



Specialists tell us that the child in preadolescent development 

 passes through these stages of savagery and barbarism. To deny 

 the child the influence, during these periods of his development, of 

 this underlying factor of social evolution is to negate the educa- 

 tional doctrine of recapitulation, to turn him into the world out of 

 harmony with and unprepared to take his place in a society thus 

 determined and is a reversion to barbarism out of which the race 

 has so painfully and laboriously toiled. The soil is pregnant with 

 forces for the normal and healthy development of the child in 

 character, mental training and physique, just as it is potential 

 to produce splendid crops under adequate culture. It may also 

 be noted that intensive utilization yields proportional results in 

 both cases. 



We may now proceed to an analysis of the influences of soil 

 contact as it reacts upon the child, (i) Garden work is auto- 

 educative- — if such a thing is possible — to an extent unequalecl by 

 any influence which the graded school can bring to bear upon the 

 child. The results of his planting and care stand forth evident to 

 all, including himself, powerfully reflecting the child's habit of 

 work and thought. Slovenliness confronts him in irregular rows, 



