March 1908.] 



223 



Miscellaneous. 



viz., depending upon any chance ex- 

 periences which they might have picked 

 up and upon a little observation work, as 

 a basis for understanding this very im- 

 portant branch of school work. We 

 have now made the school garden an 

 intrinsic part of our course in botany. 

 Every student has his own garden. This 

 experience is supplemented by observ- 

 ation and discussion of the work of the 

 children of the Training School and by 

 as much teaching as it is possible to 

 allow. The present demand for teachers 

 in this subject would not warrant every 

 student in paying so much attention to 

 this subject were there no other grain. 

 We, however, believe that apart from 

 such demand this kind of work furnishes 

 a splendid opportunity to put into con- 

 crete form some of the most important 

 principlesof modern pedagogy, principles 

 which ought to underlie all good teach- 

 ing. 1 ought to say in closing that such 

 preparation does not insure successful 

 work in this subject on the part of every 

 graduate. This is particularly true if 

 the graduate is expected to inaugurate 

 the school garden movement in a town or 

 village. Such inauguration needs a per- 

 son of strong personality, sanguine tem- 

 perament, and much common sense. 

 Given such a person with such training 

 and I do not fear for the results. — 

 Transactions of the Massachusetts Horti- 

 cultural Society for the year 1906, Part 11, 



THE EDUCATIONAL VALUE OP 

 SCHOOL GARDENS. 



By Hon. George H. Martin, 



Secretary. State Board of Education, 

 Boston, Mass. 



It is hardly necessary, in view of the 

 widespread and rapidly spreading in- 

 terests in school garden work, that I 

 should appear here this afternoon to 

 speak of the educational advantages of 

 them. They have been already dis- 

 covered by the two organizations in the 

 State which are devoted to the agricul- 

 tural and horticultural interests. The 

 State Board of Agriculture is fully alive 

 to the importance of school gardening as 

 preparatory in a way and supplementry 

 in another way to the agricultural work 

 of the State for which it is organised, 

 and the Horticultural Society has al« 

 ready gone so far in its leadership in the 

 movement that any discussion cannot 

 be for the purpose of convincing them. 

 The Superintendents of the State are 

 rapidly becoming interested in the move- 

 ment, and they have discovered educa- 

 tional advantages. The fact that last 

 year there were some three hundred 

 school gardens in the State is evidence 

 ■fit this, While it would seem from the 



report which Mr. Adams has read of the 

 prizes that were given, that school 

 gardening was comparatively limited in 

 its scope, and but a small number of 

 places are undertaking this work, there 

 is not a county in the State in which 

 there are not school gardens, and the 

 towns and cities are already taking up 

 the work with increased interest. They 

 are e;oing about it with increased intelli- 

 gence ; year by year it is better organized 

 and better related to the other school 

 work than at the start ; and yet there is 

 room for development. There seem to 

 me to be three strong educational 

 reasons why the school garden move- 

 ment should spread until it becomes 

 universal, for it is my own personal 

 feeling that the time is coming when the 

 school garden will be considered as im- 

 portant in the equipment of any public 

 school as a library. The educational 

 reason is that the garden appeals to the 

 interest of the children in seeing some- 

 thing happen and in watching the 

 development of the plant life in their 

 gardens. In watching, too, the develop- 

 ment of animal life, insect life, bird life 

 in connection with their gardens. There 

 is always something for the child to look 

 forward to, always something to excite 

 his curiosity and his wonder, and we 

 know how profound those feelings are 

 in interesting the child. He is expect- 

 ing something to happen, and is inclined 

 to be eager to see whether it does happen, 

 and if so when and how, and by and by 

 what it happens. This is the feature of 

 it which gives the garden its chief educa- 

 tional value in that it appeals to the 

 child more directly than any other form 

 of school work. We have had nothing 

 before which satisfied those feelings ; 

 all the school activities in the past con- 

 nect themselves very slightly with life 

 of any sort. Most of them have been in 

 the air rather than on the ground, and 

 the advantage is that this work is on the 

 ground. It keeps the child where he is 

 and is within his reach. That is the 

 first educational advantage. The second 

 is that it allies itself with the other 

 school activities as perhaps no single 

 school activity does. That is true of any 

 form of manual school work, but this 

 touches at more points than anything 

 else we can think of, and it brings an air 

 of reality and vitality to the other school 

 exercises. It allies itself directly with 

 what we call the language work, taking 

 it out of the air into the ground, out of 

 the theoretical into the real, out of the 

 scholastic atmosphere into the atmo- 

 sphere of real life. The opportunities for 

 developing both the oral and written 

 language of the child through the school 

 garden seem to me almost endless. It 

 allies itself not only with the literary 



