May 1907.] 



319 



Miscellaneous. 



(5) The work of the school garden to some extent meets this confessed 

 deficiency. It leads more directly towards the work of the technical and agri- 

 cultural colleges, because it deals with the materials of those courses. At the same 

 time it strengthens the pupils' work iu precisely those elements where it is confessed 

 to be weak from the stand point of general training, namely, iu initiative and in 

 independence of thinking. This is because the school garden deals with concrete 

 subjectstand phenomena instead of with abstract ideas and mere words. 



(6) The present speaker confesses to a strong prejudice in favour of that 

 sort of college training which is based upon the sciences rather than upon 

 the classics, so called. He believes the mind secures a better drill in dealing 

 with concrete things and phenomena than in dealing with abstract ideas ; that it 

 learns to reason more rapidly and accurately by following from effect back to 

 cause in the study of natural phenomena than in learning by rote some artificial 

 language ; and that the training of the judgment which necessarily goes with this 

 practical activity is of paramount importance iu all the work of life. From these 

 premises it is very easy to reason that school garden traiuing is valuable to pupils 

 by introducing them to a better sort of college course than they might otherwise 

 elect. 



THE SCHOOL GARDEN AS A FACTOR IN VILLAGE IMPROVEMENT. 

 (By Philip Emerson, Principal, Cobbet Grammar School, Lynn, 3Iass.) 



The Massachusetts Commission on Trade Schools has found that children who 

 leave school for work early are of little value to employers, because they lack the 

 initiative and sense of responsibility that were once developed amid the manifold 

 occupations of the farm home. The school garden may aid effectively in securing 

 these qualities. The school should inspire, instruct, and train the children by means 

 of a model school garden ; and then the children should apply their knowledge and 

 skill in improving their home grounds and caring for their own gardens there. 



When the child of a Russian immigrant laboriously sifts the trodden soil of 

 a tenement back yard, plants corn and flowers in place of stones and tin cans, aud 

 guards the growing plants until the corn appears on the table of his proud parents 

 and vines cover the old fence and tumbling out buildings, then something worth- 

 while has been accomplished in his education ; he will have developed initiative and 

 a sense of responsibility. 



Home gardens, in whose care the children have a stimulus and advice, by 

 means of the school garden, are better than individual gardens at school wher e 

 assignment and direction are the rule. Independent work at the right point is 

 best. Prizes, perhaps of hardy plants, and due recognition of merit are essential. 

 The school garden should be a centre for civic improvement. Hardy perennial 

 flowering plants may be propagated at school from seeds, divisions, and cuttings, 

 for sale to citizens of a city or town. The children are given training in their care, 

 and a great variety of the best hardy plants may be very cheaply introduced into a 

 community, the school incidentally receiving a considerable revenue from their sale. 

 In the Cobbet Gardens a single hardy chrysanthemum secured in the spring of 1901 

 has now multiplied to over 250 plants that will be distributed in the spring of 1006. 

 We have dozens of varieties of seedlings in cold frames. A city school garden 

 should carry garden work throughout the year, by means of cold frames, hotbeds, 

 window gardens, mushroom beds in the cellar, and ere long by a school greenhouse. 

 Such intensive garden work is the appropriate traiuing for city conditions where 

 land is valuable and children have time to spare. What school garden development 

 most needs is instruction for teachers, The Massachusetts Agricultural College. 



