304 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY, 
SCHOOL GARDENING: A CORRELATION. 
By M. A. Fayers, F.R.H.S. 
Modern critics have long persistently attacked our system of ele- 
mentary education by denying its practical usefulness. They say 
that children, especially boys in our rural districts, waste much 
precious time, which would be more profitably employed in the field 
or garden learning to follow in their fathers' footsteps as skilled farm 
labourers or gardeners/ They say that much of the curriculum is 
absolutely useless ; that their fathers did very well without nature 
study or elementary science, and that much of the matter taught is 
actually detrimental to their future. They complain that children 
remain too long at school, acquiring a dislike for an agricultural 
occupation, and declare that this is the chief cause of the scarcity of 
labour in many rural districts. 
This conception of the matter is largely due to a distorted view 
and an imperfect knowledge of the scope and aims of the subjects 
so decried. The idea that the success of preceding generations in 
agricultural operations was not in spite of lack of scientific knowledge, 
but because of it, is a fallacy which must be exposed at the outset. When 
a man who disclaims all aid from " book-learning," as he scornfully 
calls it,, acts upon the results of careful observation — either his own 
or that of others — he is a scientist, though he may not know it. He is 
employing the scientific processes of induction and deduction, though 
he may never have heard of them. 
The modern system of education merely seeks to regulate and 
utilize the natural tendency to observation, which is such a precious 
gift in childhood. It does not ignore the probabilities of future 
employment, but aims at making that employment more interesting 
and attractive, by explaining those empirical laws which have been 
accepted by their forefathers as a matter of course ; by experimentally 
proving the truth of such laws ; and by encouraging individual efforts 
to obtain knowledge at first hand. In effect it aims at unfolding the 
whole field of systematized knowledge, embodied under the idea of 
" a science," stage by stage, from earliest years, so that the day school 
pupil may look forward with pleasurable anticipation to the more 
advanced class of the continuation school. Constant reference is 
made to agricultural events occurring around the school, with the 
special view of inviting questions on simple operations ; and in this 
way school life is correlated with home interests. 
A profitable school curriculum planned upon these lines should 
lead up to practical use in : — (i) the daily occupation, (2) the allot- 
ment to be cultivated in leisure hours, (3) the small holding upon 
which the skilled horticulturist ventures his savings. 
