AMONG SCHOOL GARDENS 



the home folks or neighbors, or at the market, are 

 an inducement to boys of well-to-do families to 

 sustained efforts in order to increase their spending 

 money or show what they can do. In the school 

 term, gardening is frequently offered in the fifth, 

 sixth and seventh grades and not in the eighth, as 

 there the children are often over-busy preparing 

 to meet the requirements necessary to pass to the 

 high school. Moreover, a large number of children 

 leave the schools about this grade, and gardening 

 should be taught them as soon as they can readily 

 handle the tools if they are to learn enough of it to 

 practice it for pleasure or to eke out a livelihood. 



Allied to the school, the advantages that garden 

 work offers may be considered under eleven heads: 



(i) The school garden is the source of the best 

 nature study material, intimately associated with 

 the child's daily life and which through owner- 

 ship of an individual plot may be one center of 

 his childish interests. The use of its materials 

 may be directed by the nature study course re- 

 quired by the school authorities, or it may con- 

 sist of any systematized treatment sufficient to 

 cover the special interest that the hour may 

 bring. Whatever the aim, the period should be 

 as free as possible from the exactions of routine 

 work. The child should feel his freedom and 

 rejoice in it, think and see for himself, and freely 

 speak of his observations and his conclusions. 

 He should be led to self-conviction of any that 

 are erroneous. Where it is possible to give the 



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