WHAT MAKES A SCHOOL GARDEN WORTH WHILE 17 



experiences that " the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and 

 the strength of the Wolf is the Pack." This fierce phrase 

 contains the germ of mutual aid ; and mutual aid can by the 

 right culture be nurtured into cooperation ; and cooperation 

 is to-day the great life force of society. 



Now, admitting that all these dynamic currents are being 

 set free in a school garden for the purposes of education, the 

 question is how they may be most effectively employed ; and 

 this can hardly be profitably discussed until the use of the 

 term " school garden " has been agreed upon. By some it has 

 been interpreted thus : A school garden worth the name is not 

 a teacher's garden, or a philanthropist's garden, but a garden 

 worked out in thought and act by happy, purposeful children. 

 " Purposeful," in the mind of the educator, would naturally 

 mean that the children, as well as doing the work, are carry- 

 ing out plans of their own devising. Is this too much to ask 

 in behalf of an education garden, if that is what it really is 

 to be ? Hardly, if we are considering the garden from the 

 viewpoint of the child ; but considering it; for a moment, 

 from the angle of the teacher, the emphasis somehow changes. 

 That there is a difference can easily be explained by the fact 

 that to a teacher the garden plot, in and for itself, is often 

 the matter of deepest concern. And, as it happens, more 

 seems to depend upon the correctness of the early steps in 

 conventional gardening than in any other study. Is a teacher 

 so dull as not to foresee that, after the season is well under 

 way, a mistake may be patched up, to be sure, but never 

 really rectified ? Even before midsummer a garden has be- 

 come a sort of exercise book where each blot and crooked 

 letter stands magnified, — made so large, in fact, that literally 

 he who runs may read. For from the first spade-thrust a 

 garden lives in the public eye. The genial policeman, the 

 bank president, the butcher's boy, all pay a school garden the 



