Agricultural Education, 



246 



[September, 1910. 



*' School Gardens " to the students of the 

 Madras Teachers' College at Saidapet. 

 In the course of his address he said : — 



"The general ground on which I base 

 my appeal for more school gardens is, I 

 need hardly tell you, that I regard the 

 Educational Department as an undeve- 

 loped adjunct of the more important 

 Department of Agriculture. In order 

 that the Agricultural Department may 

 experience less difficulty in persuading 

 the next generation of 'cultivators to 

 adopt more up-to-date methods in their 

 cultivation, the Educational Department 

 must make the first approaches when 

 they are young, when, as your Syllabus 

 says, the habits of thought, feeling and 

 action are formed, and when perception, 

 observation, and attention are likely to 

 be most active. In no other calling are 

 these qualities more necessary than in 

 that of a farmer. In no other profession 

 is the error of confounding the process 

 of passing examinations with the acqui- 

 sition of real knowledge more likely to 

 lead to disappointment, if not disaster. 

 I shall arrange the remarks which I am 

 going to make to-night under two 

 general heads : first, the reasons why 

 more and better school gardens are desir- 

 able in Madras ; and second, what they 

 should and should not try to do and be. 



"There are two main defects in the 

 mental equipment of the educated 

 classes of this country, so widely spread 

 that I might almost go so far as to call 

 them national characteristics — the habit 

 of identifying book-learning and know- 

 ledge, and the want of observation of, 

 and the general indifference to, external 

 nature. When you ask a man what he 

 has learnt, he usually tells what stand- 

 ard he has studied up to, or what 

 examinations he has passed, not what 

 he knows. Knowledge seems to be 

 almost regarded as a means to an end, 

 i.e., to the obtaining of a certificate. 

 Hence we see such strange cases as men, 

 who have studied Botany or any of the 

 other natural sciences, going on to the 

 study of law, with the intention of 

 following the profession of vakils. And 

 when you ask any one how he likes a 

 new place of residence, the reasons 

 which he gives for liking or disliking it, 

 when they are not closely connected 

 with his health, such as the food and 

 water, are usually limited to the cost of 

 living or the conveniences available for 

 the education of his children. In a 

 similar case the European would usually 

 give at least some place to the natural 

 amenities of the locality. As regards 

 the habit of confusing book-knowledge 

 with knowledge in the proper sense of 

 the word, I would first point out that 



words are only symbols of reality. In 

 particular, the natural sciences have no 

 meaning or interest apart from the 

 material world of nature, whose proper- 

 ties and movements they describe. To 

 study any of the physical sciences, 

 therefore, without connecting them at 

 every step with reality, is a mere waste 

 of time. 



"In the past few years I have been 

 brought in contact with men who have 

 had some training in physical science, 

 and I have noticed that it is not an un- 

 common thing to find that they have 

 not really connected the sciences they 

 have learnt with the real world. Their 

 interest in science ceased with the class 

 room, or rather with the examination 

 room. During the rest of their lives 

 they have been witnessing and taking 

 part in a continual series of chemical 

 and biological experiments, without 

 being aware of the fact at all, remind- 

 ing one of the man who was surprised 

 and delighted to be told that he had 

 been talking prose all his life without 

 knowing it. 



" Now in the case of the school garden 

 this point of view is very clear. It 

 affords a ready means of connecting the 

 study of elementary physical science 

 with the realities which the books deal 

 with. It forms a bridge from the 

 theory of botany, chemistry, and phy- 

 sics to the real world ; to those fields in 

 which the parents of your future 

 students toil to gain their living. If I 

 were to go further, and discuss the 

 method of nature study, as it is called, 

 I should be venturing out of my depth. 

 The Madras scheme of studies for ele- 

 mentary shools foi- boys summarises the 

 aim of nature study as follows : — ' In- 

 struction proceeds from study of the 

 actual object rather than from descrip- 

 tion or reading. The aim is not so much 

 to impart information as to lead the 

 children to find out for themselves all 

 that they can about familiar and natural 

 phenomena,' 



"Much might be said on the second 

 point, the strange indifference of edu- 

 cated Indians to external nature and the 

 beauties of their own country. This 

 may be due in part to the attraction 

 which metaphysics has always had for the 

 Indian mind, to the exclusion of interest 

 in the world of nature. I should be the 

 last person co deny the importance of 

 metaphysics, but in the Kaliyuga in 

 which we are living we are under the 

 necessity of taking our part in the drama 

 of this world, or farce, if such it is, and 

 therefore we cannot afford to ignore 

 the world in which we live. On the 

 other hand, this difference may have a 



