The Practical Value of Gardening in Primary Work
By A. W. Spaulding
THAT gardening is practicable in primary school work has been demonstrated; that it may be successful from the gardener's point of view has been proved in some instances; and that it furnishes a means of education not less valuable than that of the schoolroom we need not the evidence of our experience to show, since we have for it the divine word. Yet practical objections have caused its neglect generally, and kept it in the background nearly everywhere. It will be found in this, as in other reforms, that its value will be discovered only by those who are pushed through difficulties by a sense of the imperativeness of God's directions. What aid does the garden offer the church-school teacher in his work? First, what is his work? Is it to produce minds to be measured with those of the secular schools? Is it to make tongues glib in the formulas of arithmetic and the lists of geography and history? Is it to create a machine that will make the best showing in the county at “last-day exercises”?—No; it is to get boys and girls ready to proclaim the message of Jesus' coming, when and where older ones can not give it; it is to subdue evil traits of character, and to have implanted in their place the graces of Christ; it is to build up bodies upon a rational foundation of healthful living; it is to make persistent, exact workers out of lackadaisical loiterers; it is to teach children to think clearly and rightly, to speak correctly and with grace, to know the essentials of common knowledge—all for the sole purpose of giving the truth to the glory of God. Then how does gardening help him? Well, one of my boys, whose name in this article is Barty (from Bartholomew, I suppose), does his third grade work only when some eye is on him. He starts well at getting his lesson in his seat, but his eyes easily wander to colored pictures, or pretty butterflies, or whispered confidences; for his reader is a dull old book, anyway, after he gets an inkling of what it contains. “Interest him,” says the Normal Graduate, “in something that will take his mind and keep his fingers at work.” Good! Let us see: he has discarded sewing cards as being beneath his stage of advancement, and rather fussy anyway; paper sloyd is worn out, and for babies anyway—and I agree with him; basketry? scroll work? good, if there were the facilities, or it were practicable at odd moments, or did not take the attention of others; drawing? never could draw! And, in any case, while persistence is being cultivated, he must somehow be getting a proficiency in reading, spelling, arithmetic, etc. “Coaxing won't do,” says the Disciplinarian-of-Sterner-Stuff; “he must be made to do the hard and distasteful things, and learn to stick at them. Keep him at his books.” I can't do it when I am hearing recitations. Come out with me into the garden. The onions need weeding, the corn needs hoeing, the potato-bugs must be killed. Barty gets the corn to hoe—not the hardest job. While I am here and there, he gets tired, wants a change, goes over to watch Leo weed the onions. But here is something I can keep him at, working with him if necessary. And as though he gets hot, and sweats, and wants to see if it wouldn't seem shorter to hoe odd hills,—skipping around,—and cuts down a stalk or two in flippant disgust, he does get through to the end of the row, and finally looks with some pride on a task well done. The garden may teach persistence, and it gives a quick reward for duty done. Not to dwell so long upon any other one point, notice also that gardening gives opportunity for training the flippant, careless child to do his work carefully and thoroughly, as the irksome penmanship and even the more delightsome drawing can not do. It gives a chance to the intelligent and thoughtful teacher to train in healthful postures in work, in principles of breathing, in necessity for bathing, and in all the laws of hygiene. Language culture is not to be left out of the garden; and while doubtless the most important language lesson to be taught there is, “Let your words be few and well chosen,” the greater freedom from constraint in speech will give the teacher opportunity to note wherein the children most need training. I have not spoken at all of the connection of nature study with the garden, nor of the spiritual lessons to be gained from the study of its problems and mysteries,—a work, by the way, which is liable to be neglected by some teachers, and overdone, or rather illy done, by others. But I know that every teacher who will take the deep interest in this work which its nature and value demand, will find it a means of developing such characters as the work of God requires, characters which the school-room alone can not develop. It is evident, of course, that gardening so conducted for a profitable length of time must be in a school which follows God's text-book from the first page to the last—from spring through summer to winter. A. W. SPAULDING.