Feb. 1908.] 



155 



Miscellaneous. 



best fighting and the best defence that 

 has ever been made was not done by the 

 trained and richly equipped red-coats of 

 Great Britain, but by the embattled 

 farmers and home lovers of Charlestown 

 and Boston and Bunker Hill. As our 

 late lamented Senator Hoar once said, 

 " Times were when men were proud to 

 strike for their altars and their fires, 

 but you hear very little of men striking 

 for their flats and furnaces." The men 

 who will be most anxious to defend 

 their country, the men who will be most 

 patriotic to stamp out the evils of city 

 corruption and commercial crime, will 

 not be the men who frequent the 

 crowded cities and factories, who live 

 like cliff dwellers in the high apartments 

 of our great cities, but it will be the 

 sturdy, home loving, patriotic citizen 

 who has been kept in better tone and in 

 a better environment in a homelike 

 home, and has developed a higher appre- 

 ciation of what life may mean. The 

 State furthermore can better afford to 

 give some thought to this phase of her 

 development, since it is without question 

 upon the soil and upon the country 

 slums that humanity must depend for 

 supplying the commodities which go to 

 make up the activities of the city, and 

 for supplying man with the necessities 

 and comforts of life. The great pro- 

 blem of the slums in our cities, and the 

 great problem of the village and country 

 slums may be improved by instructing 

 these people as to the possibilities of a 

 plot of ground properly cultivated, and 

 when we think of our vast acres of 

 Massachusetts land now unused, and the 

 many who are practically starving in the 

 crowded centres, it would seem a legiti- 

 mate investment for the State to expend 

 public money upon any movement which 

 would tend to encourage the better 

 appreciation and development of our 

 agricultural and horticultural resources. 

 The points which I should like to make 

 are these : that the educational value of 

 children's gardens is becoming ques- 

 tioned less and less ; that public opinion 

 as a force has to be recognized and won 

 in favour of this movement. To do this, 

 the introduction of the movement must 

 be well planned ; the soil must be well 

 prepared ; and the workers of the soil 

 must be carefully inoculated with 

 correct ideas and right attitudes and 

 aims. Societies and associations with 

 similar aims must be enlisted and 

 drafted in aid of the movement. The 

 newspaper can be a powerful force in 

 advertising and spreading the news of 

 the movement, but what is needed most 

 of all is courage on the part of the State 

 to provide as well for this phase of 

 education in training teachers for this 

 work as in training teachers of arith- 



metic, of geography, or of language ; 

 that is the business of the State to help 

 create a better attitude toward the 

 betterment of rural and village con- 

 ditions, and especially to train children 

 to be men and women who will organize 

 such homes themselves will be enjoyable 

 to old and young and be incentives to 

 patriotic and loyal citizenship. We can 

 teach civics and talk about citizenship, 

 but we shall get very little civic right- 

 eousness or undefiled patriotism unless 

 we can establish a wholesome and 

 nourishing background of excellent 

 homes and home life, and I believe there 

 is no other one movement which 

 can be made to serve in the development 

 of good homes and finer sentiments 

 than the movement for better gardens, 

 better home surroundings, and more at- 

 tractive life away from the deadening 

 influences of the factory and competition 

 of the crowded city.— Transact ions of 

 the Massaclmisetts Horticultural Society, 

 for the year 1906, Part II. 



SCHOOL GARDENING. 

 By Lucy R. Latter. 



School-Gardening, its place in educa- 

 tion, should be the title of this article, 

 for, owing to much uncertainty and 

 difference of opinion on this point, there 

 is a great deal of doubt among teachers 

 and others as to the wisdom of taking 

 gardening with school children at all. 

 Such people see nothing in it but another 

 subject added to an already overcrowd- 

 ed curriculum. They feel that unless 

 the work be taken after school hours 

 there is but little chance of sufficient 

 time being obtainable, with the rest of 

 the school work, for the children to 

 really do the gardening. The chances 

 are, therefore, that the bulk of the work 

 must, in the long run, fall upon the 

 teachers, and more harm than good be 

 done to the children and them alike. 

 Let us see how the problem is to be 

 solved that such an occupation as 

 gardening may become a source of real 

 pleasure and ever-increasing knowledge. 



There are two points of view from 

 which the subject of gardening may be 

 considered, namely, as a direct aim in 

 itself, or, as but a means towards a given 

 end. It is because people have not real- 

 ised the difference between these 

 points of view and their relative value 

 that so much confusion and disappoint- 

 ment have arisen in taking gardening 

 with school children. I hold that the 

 duty of the ordinary school teacher- 

 is not to train all his or her scholars 

 to be good gardeners, any more than 

 to train them all to be good builders, 

 painters, or the like, but so to use 



