The school-garden even has an important relation to esthetics. Floriculture, landscape-gardening, tree-planting and fruit-culture appeal to the sense of beauty. The whole yard and garden together need to be planted and laid out on principles of taste and attractiveness.
Perhaps the most important relation of the school-garden is that to the home. Where boys and girls become properly interested in the school-garden, they naturally desire to raise a garden at home in their own back-yard and perhaps flowerbeds and trees in the front yard. This answers in many ways to the necessities and comforts of the home. The whole town may take on a new appearance, in its yards and gardens, on account of this interest developed in the school-garden. Beauty and utility are here combined in the best way; the home-table is supplied with vegetables and beautified by the flowers which the children themselves raise.
The educative effect upon the boy or girl of carrying out through the whole season plans for cultivating a garden is one of the best products of good training. The cultivation of plants requires constant attention, forethought, intelligence, self-reliance and a kind of originality; difficulties are to be met and overcome. Insects infest the plants and must be gotten rid of; chickens scratch up and spoil the garden and a fence is needed for protection; a dry spell calls for some plan of watering; weeds quickly take possession of a garden; and the child must be intelligent and thoughtful in meeting such difficulties. This is the best kind of training. To say the least, it is far better than letting the boy run wild on the streets and getting into all sorts of mischief.
Most of our progressive normal schools in all parts of the country are taking up the problem of school-gardens, not for the children simply but for the teachers. Young teachers are set to work to learn the whole problem, so that they may later guide the children in garden work. It is clear that the school-garden is to occupy an important place in the future education of boys and girls.
The value of school-gardens in education has long been recognized in Europe. They were started as early as 1819 in Schleswig-Holstein. In 1869 they were prescribed by law in Austria and Sweden, in Belgium since 1873 and in France since 1880. There are at present about 20,000 schools in Austria having gardens, 45,000 in France, 8,000 in Russia and 2,500 in Sweden. The number in the latter country once was double the present number, but has decreased since the introduction of manual training. School gardening is practically obligatory for the children of the common schools of Belgium, Netherlands, British West Indies and Ceylon. Many German cities teach agriculture by “demonstration” in which the pupils are not allowed any share. Many of the schools of France and Germany have gardens “not with a view to instructing the pupils in agriculture, but for the benefit of the teachers.” Many of the foreign governments subsidize the school-gardens, offer prizes, and make training in agriculture obligatory for normal-school graduates.
It may be said in conclusion that school-gardens have an important relation to manual training and to the whole subject of industrial education. It is a phase of manual training to teach children to use the tools and implements of the garden, to prepare the soil and carefully cultivate plants. It is an outdoor physical training combined with intelligent mental effort quite equal in its effects to shop-work and in some ways superior.
Some of the great universities, like Cornell, Illinois, Ohio and Louisiana, have taken up the problem of school agriculture, country life and scientific farming in earnest. Pamphlets are published by experts of agriculture dealing with important phases of school agriculture and school-gardens. Consult Jewell's Agricultural Education (Bul. 368, U. S. Bureau of Education).
School Or′ganiza′tion and Man′agement, as a somewhat distinct problem calls for elaborate treatment. It embraces the plans of organization, the sources of revenue, the selection of school-sites, the erection of school-buildings, seating, ventilating, lighting and sanitation; the courses of study, choice of textbooks, classification of pupils, preparation and examination of teachers; the general supervision of the school, the authority of the teacher, the management of the classes, rules of conduct, modes of punishment, presentation of motives, relation of teacher and pupils. The student is referred to the following authorities for a general treatment of these problems: School Economy, Wickersham; School Supervision, Payne; School Interests and Duties, King; School Management, White; School Management, Kellogg; Theory and Practice of Teaching, Page; Systems of Education, Gill; and School Hygiene, Kotelmann (Bergstrom's translation). For detailed treatment of special phases of this broad subject see Teacher's College Contribution to Education, Teacher's College, Columbia University.
School San′ita′tion may be defined as the application of knowledge and of the laws of science with a view to the preservation and promotion of the health of those attending school. Formerly the term included little more than the proper heating, lighting and ventilation of school-buildings; but it has been extended to include all factors with which it is practicable for the school to deal, which concern the health of the pupil, as the detection of defects of
