DIFFERENT KINDS OF SCHOOL GARDENS 



to develop a healthy brain, to prevent imbecility, 

 "for all thought has a motor side or element."* 

 It is upon this demonstrated proposition that the 

 educational value of manual training is based, 

 it cannot be too often repeated that the brain 

 should be trained in childhood not only by intel- 

 lectual processes but by the development of the 

 smaller muscles, especially those of the hands, by 

 the constant requisition upon sensory and motor 

 nerves, and by the constant quickening of sense 

 perception. The result is intellectual power. It 

 is psychologically sound, then, to propose hand 

 training for those mentally deficient, provided 

 that what is proposed is within the grasp of their 

 low mentality. 



With some imbecile children tools might be 

 dangerous to themselves or to their fellows; with 

 those less mentally deficient, the simplest forms 

 of manual training may be undertaken provided 

 they require only such amount of thought or 

 work as shall gently and gradually stimulate the 

 brain. Simple garden work, varied in require- 

 ments from cleaning up paths, picking flowers 

 for bouquets or spent blossoms lest they go to 

 seed, and tasks as simple, up through the scale to 

 more exact or difficult duties, offers hand training 

 and gives pleasurable hours of work which may 

 be divided into periods suited to the individual 

 strength and fitful moods of the feeble minded. 

 Thus in schools where the mentally deficient are 



♦ Sir James Crichton- Brown. 

 59 



