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this type were virtually unknown in America, we now find them all along the line from Maine to California.

The history of the origin and progress of the school garden in our own country parallels in many respects the story of the introduction of the kindergarten here. Like the kindergarten the school garden is from imported seed, flourishing beyond expectation in our native soil, and creating new problems of nature and nurture. It is a curious circumstance that in all our borrowing from the educational systems of our friends across the sea, we have so long overlooked the fact that the school garden is there regarded as one of the most essential and valued features of educational experience.

The principles underlying school garden work are practically the same educational verities upon which the kindergarten is based. Indeed, out-of-door gardening was one of the important features in the theory and practice of the founders of the kindergarten, as well as of their successors in Germany. Its omission here has been deplored by the closest students of kindergarten philosophy, who point out that the wholesome conditions of a well wrought school garden conform more nearly to the true kindergarten ideal than does the artificial life of an over wrought, wholly indoor, kindergarten. It is also claimed by leaders in kindergarten thought, that the substitution of real work in a real garden among real plants, birds, and insects, for the typical and play work of the kindergarten, is a necessary step in the direction of saner methods and safer results.

Like the kindergarten, too, the school garden is modifying educational concepts and demands. It is

effectively overturning traditions and is measuring cherished courses of study by new standards. It is requiring from the school world at large, not rigid conformity, but intelligent adaptation and readjust

ment.

Like the kindergarten, again, the school garden has evidently come to stay. When we look it squarely in the face we see that the fact of the school garden is after all its only really new feature, for we have long treasured its spirit in our more familiar nature study movement. Without doubt the finest result of all the nature study work is that it has taken the children of our land out of doors, and if it has led them to the school garden, so much the better.

But it is not my purpose to dwell on these already well understood actualities and possibilities of gardening. The phase of the subject which claims consideration at this point is just how the larger educational values of gardening articulate with the elementary system. Gardening is certainly vastly more than applied botany, practical arithmetic, and so on. Its chief value lies in the opportunity it creates for intelligent and intense self-activity. Granting this as one of its strongest features, it is evident that the subject of practical agriculture, broadly interpreted, must properly be considered as a form of manual training. It is this aspect which I desire to emphasize.

Manual training from its direct connection with life and with the arts of life, so enriches our curriculum of text-book studies as to give it a real point of contact with every-day living and loving and laboring. Incidentally it includes the training of the hand, the

training of the eye, the training of the mind, and the training of the heart.

In the old days the whole range of farm duties, from breaking steers to making soap, added to the education of learning the art of life by living. When we see the great number of men and women who have risen through this homely toil to leadership, we are led irresistibly to the conclusion that modern life with its freedom from these very elements which have brought success to the older generation, must be supplemented in some way, even in the rural communities, if we are to enjoy the advantages that our fathers gained from this essential and practical training. Manual training is a necessity for our schools. The question we have to answer is not, Shall we have manual training? It is rather, What form of manual training shall we choose? Is it settled that sloyd, or iron working, or sewing, or cooking, supplies ideal conditions for learning the art of life? The more we consider the possibilities and limitations of any of these forms of manual training, the more objections we shall find to each if we are to attempt to use it as a fixed type.

Agreed that the basis for the selection of the forms of manual training to be used must be educational rather than merely economic or utilitarian, but we may find that that which is economic or utilitarian may sometimes for this very reason be educational in the best sense. The fact that the knowledge or the skill gained in any form of manual training will be useful in the future, is not of itself a sufficient reason for selecting that particular form of training, and yet this usefulness frequently furnishes a great stimulus to the necessary interest.

Again, our manual training must be practical. It must lead to ends that are desirable in themselves.

Our manual training must give keenness of observation; it must give ability to perform a definite task according to specific oral or written directions; it must present abundant opportunity for drawing conclusions from the child's own observations; it must afford physical training and relaxation from purely mental effort; it must involve healthful labor, pleasant thoughts, and kindly motives. It must allow full play to the creative powers, and that creativeness must admit artistic expression.

It is not difficult to prove that practical agriculture supplies very many of the conditions of an all-around manual training.

First, it is broadly educational. If it is not questioned that nature study through interest in life and the interrelation of its different forms develops mental power, then it is plainly evident that the opportunity for such development is increased when presented in connection with the vital interest and practical work of the school garden.

As for training in keenness of observation and in reasoning power, there is no subject which supplies more favorable conditions than agriculture, with its multitude of varying phenomena, its ready response to simple laws, and its innumerable unsolved problems.

The knowledge acquired in the garden is also well worth while, and covers a wide range of subjects. We may study there at first hand: the soil, its origin, tillage, moisture; the importance of drainage; how the soil may be impoverished; the origin and nature of the commercial fertilizers; how the plant feeds upon

the soil; the value of rotation of crops; how the plant feeds from the air; the sap current; the flower and seed, pollination, crosses, propagation by buds, selecting the seed, seed vitality; weeds; how to raise a fruit tree, grafting, budding, planting, pruning; diseases of plants; insects; birds; farm crops; domestic animals; farm economy; etc.

Agriculture is not only one of the best educational subjects available, but there is an immeasurable need for definite instruction in city and country along these very important lines.

Again, the teaching of agriculture in our schools is practical. We ask for enormously expensive equipments and laboratories for teaching the natural sciences in-doors, while land and seeds and the necessary labor would cost a trifling sum in comparison, and the land may usually be very easily found.

The teaching of agriculture involves healthful, outof-door labor, pleasant thoughts, and kindly motives. It stimulates to a continuance of this labor outside of school hours, and it adds to the resources for happiness after school years. The garden becomes a delight instead of a place for drudgery.

But its finest field lies in its adaptability to the individual expression of the child's creative powers. He can design and make a box or a sled or a tool just as he can plan and make his garden; he can perform the experiments of the laboratory just as he can conduct. his experiments with soils and fertilizers and crosses and selection of seed; but in the garden, where he is setting into continuous play the forces of life itself, there is a creativeness beyond his own.

Finally, our work in agriculture may have artistic

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