children's garden conference. 211 



(6) The present speaker confesses to a strong prejudice in favor of that 

 sort of college training which is based upon the sciences rather than upon 

 the classics, so called. He believes the mind secures a better drill in deal- 

 ing with concrete things and phenomena than in dealing with abstract 

 ideas; that it learns to reason more rapidly and accurately by following 

 from effect back to cause in the study of natural phenomena than in learn- 

 ing by rote some artificial language; and that the training of the judg- 

 ment which necessarily goes with this practical activity is of paramount 

 importance in all the work of life. From these premises it is very easy to 

 reason that school garden training is valuable to pupils by introducing 

 them to a better sort of college course than they might otherwise elect. 



The School Garden as a Factor in Village Improvement. 



BY PHILIP EMERSON, PRINCIPAL COBBET GRAMMAR SCHOOL, LYNN, MASS. 



The Massachusetts Commission on Trade Schools has found that chil- 

 dren who leave school for work early are of little value to employers 

 because they lack the initiative and sense of responsibility that were once 

 developed amid the manifold occupations of the farm home. The school 

 garden may aid effectively in securing these qualities. The school should 

 inspire, instruct, and train the children by means of a model school garden; 

 and then the children should apply their knowledge and skill in improv- 

 ing their home grounds and caring for their own gardens there. 



When the child of a Russian immigrant laboriously sifts the trodden 

 soil of a tenement back yard, plants corn and flowers in place of stones 

 and tin cans, and guards the growing plants until the corn appears on the 

 table of his proud parents and vines cover the old fence and tumbling out- 

 buildings, then something worth while has been accomplished in his edu- 

 cation; he will have developed initiative and a sense of responsibility. 



Home gardens in whose care the children have stimulus and advice, by 

 means of the school garden, are better than individual gardens at school 

 where assignment and direction are the rule. Independent work at the 

 right point is best. Prizes, perhaps of hardy plants, and due recognition 

 of merit are essential. The school garden should be a center for civic 

 improvement. Hardy perennial flowering plants may be propagated at 

 school from seeds, divisions, and cuttings, for sale to citizens of a city or 

 town. The children are given training in their care, and a great variety 

 of the best hardy plants may be very cheaply introduced into a community, 

 the school incidentally receiving a considerable revenue from their sale. 

 In the Cobbet gardens a single hardy chrysanthemum secured in the spring 

 of 1904 has now multiplied to over 250 plants that will be distributed in 

 the spring of 1906. We have dozens of varieties of seedlings in cold frames. 



