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August 27, 1908. 



The Weekly Florists^ Review* 



11 



Boston Gardeners' and Florists' Qub on an Outing: at Amherst, Mass^ Aug. 15. 



SCHOOL GARDENS. 



By L. C. Corbett, Washington, D. C. 



[Read before the Society of American Florists, 

 in convention at Niagara Falls, August 18 to 21, 

 1908.] 



As gardeners and florists we are nat- 

 urally interested in any movement which 

 makes for the upbuilding of the craft 

 which we represent. The school garden, 

 however, carries a broader conception 

 than the upbuilding of a single craft. 

 It aims to offer to the developing mind 

 an opportunity to obtain a symmetrical 

 education. By training the hands and 

 eyes the brain acquires the power of in- 

 terpretation and discrimination, two of 

 the basal factors of knowledge. The 

 aim of the school garden is to interest 

 the youth in nature by close association 

 — to teach science, logic and mathe- 

 matics by observing the development of 

 natural objects. 



This instruction without books robs 

 the school of its transition period bug- 

 bear, the textbook. Before the age of 

 textbooks instruction was oral; with the 

 advent of written language instructors 

 depended not upon personal ability, but 

 upon the preserved knowledge of others, 

 which they required to be taken in 

 steady, regular doses, according to the 

 size and age of the scholar, regardless 

 of his ability or liking for the subject. 

 In other words, the course of study was 

 and is, in most schools, a carefully pre- 

 scribed one, which must be followed by 

 every student who enters the school, re- 

 gardless of his birth, desires or fitness 

 for the work. 



Defects in Our School System. 



This condition in our schools is un- 

 doubtedly the outgrowth of our modern 

 commercialism. The public school has 

 come to be a stupendous organization, 

 managed in great measure under the 

 same rules and by the same type of men 

 as are the trusts. In fact, the public 

 school system of our country might with 

 propriety be classed "The Great Ameri- 

 can Educational Trust." In our desire 

 to perfect a system we have 'in great 

 measure lost sight of the individual, and 

 in so doing we are defeating the pri- 

 mary object for which our public schools 

 were instituted — the perpetuation of the 

 republic through the education of the 

 masses. 



The teaching methods of our great 

 city schools seem to be based on the 

 idea that all men are born equal and 

 have a common destiny. Each child is 

 so much mortar to be cast into a build- 

 ing block for the state, which will fit 



into the great wall — the foundation of 

 the republic. There is no training for 

 the work of life in our public schools, 

 properly so called. A few city schools 

 are advanced enough to teach sloyd, 

 manual training, cooking, sewing, and in 

 Washington we have a business high 

 school in addition to the other varia- 

 tions above enumerated. Most of our 

 public school work is confined to the 

 "three R's" and goes no fartheV. In 

 this respect our public schools are a 

 type of educational trust. 



Methods of a Great Edticator. 



The school garden idea aims to break 

 the monotony of the curriculum by open- 

 ing the way for the exercise of indi- 

 vidual tastes and ideas within certain 

 Umits. The modern conception of the 

 plan is not as broad as the original 

 idea, as conceived by Pestalozzi and 

 I'roebel. Pestalozzi believed in teaching 

 out-of-doors, because children are both 

 barbaric and nomadic — they want to go 

 somewhere. Like all wise investigators, 

 he proved his ideas. "He at first took 

 several boys and girls of from 8 to 12 

 years of age, and had them work with 

 him in his garden. They cared for 

 fowls, looked after the sheep, milked 

 the cows. The master worked with them, 

 and as they worked they talked. Going 

 to and from their duties, Pestalozzi 

 would call their attention to the wild 

 birds, and the flowers, plants and weeds. 

 They would draw pictures of things, 

 make collections of leaves and flowers 

 and keep a record of their observations 

 and discoveries. Through keeping these 

 records they learned to read and write 

 and acquired the use of simple mathe- 

 matics. Things they did not understand 

 they would read about in the books found 

 in the teacher's library. Books were 

 secondary and quite incidental to the 

 scheme of study. When work seemed to 

 become irksome they would all stop and 

 play games. At other times they would 

 sit and just talk about what their work 

 happened to suggest. If the weather was 

 unpleasant, there was a shop where they 

 made hoes and rakes and other tools 

 they needed. They also built bird-houses 

 and made simple pieces of furniture, as 

 all the pupils, boys and girls, became 

 more or less familiar with carpenters' 

 and blacksmiths' tools. They patched 

 their shoes, mended their clothing and at 

 times prepared their own food. Pes- 

 talozzi found that the number of pupils 

 he could look after in this way was not 

 more than ten. But, to his own satis- 

 faction, at least, he proved that chiU 



dren taught by this method surpassed 

 those who were given the regular set 

 courses of instructioij. " 



History Repeats Itself* 



This experiment of Pestalozzi 's, out 

 of which, under the genius of Froebel, 

 grew the "kindergarten," is now nearly 

 100 years old. In it, however, we find 

 all that we now include in manual train- 

 ing, nature study and the school garden 

 idea. It is only another proof of the 

 old saying that "history repeats itself." 

 The reason assigned for the failure of 

 this early effort was the lack of coopera- 

 tion in the home. It is to be hoped that 

 the present movement along this line 

 may not suffer a like fate. Let all who 

 are interested in the success of this form 

 of education give it the support which 

 will make for its success. 



The modern school garden idea will 

 probably spread more rapidly than did 

 the old, because we are more accustomed 

 to liberal ideas in education and because 

 the modern interpretation is more re- 

 stricted in its application. Instead of 

 attempting to replace the existing 

 schools, the idea is to supplement them 

 — to add a department which shall help 

 to round out the course of study for 

 those who have an interest in natural 

 things. 



Mental Discipline in Gardening. 



For some students it will be the means 

 of stimulating an interest in subjects 

 which, without it, would ever have re- 

 mained a sealed book. It has the im- 

 portant advantage that through it the 

 child is led to make discovery, one of 

 the most important elements in the suc- 

 cess of education. The steps followed in 

 the planning, planting and cultivation 

 of a garden contain the elements of 

 sound logic; each step is taken for a 

 definite purpose and the results are the 

 logical outcome of the action of natural 

 laws. 



These results are of the utmost im- 

 portance when obtained under the guid- 

 ance of a skilled teacher, for they fur- 

 nish the elements necessary for instruc- 

 tion in every one of tie so-called com- 

 mon branches, as welMw in elementary 

 science or nature study. But instruc- 

 tion received through the laboratory 

 method is much more effective than that 

 received by textbook alone. The reason 

 for this is that experiments require the 

 united use of several faculties, which 

 naturally makes a more lasting impres- 

 sion upon the developing mind than the 

 mere exercise of the memory, which is 



