Daily capital journal. (Salem, Oregon) 1903-1919, 1906-06-16

MIN. lie Will nnu SOclety anu SatlSIac
tion for his appetite at home. If &
school garden cannot thus transform 8
community alone and Immediately, il
will prove an effective agency to thi:
end when efficiently and persistently
conducted.
An Educational Purpose.
School gardens have distinctly ed.
ucational purpose to serve, too. While
they afford exercise to all the muscles
under healthful conditions, and also
stimulate the children, and thereby
their parents and neighbors to prefer
beautiful, natural surroundings, and to
appreciate the practical values of the
vegetable garden, gardening also sets
children thinking to good purpose. A
garden is made with brains rather than
with tools. Any one cam slash weeds
with hoe, but not every one can use
a hoe so as to kill the weeds, form a
loose mulch to, save soil moisture, and
also avoid cutting the roots of growing
crops. Right here the school can i'm.
prove upon the home training of the
past. For the reasons limited school
garden has as much reason for b. ing
in a country community of farmers as
in city where gardens are rare. Farm
work has been unscientific work, obedi.
ent to tradition, and crops have been
small. The modern farmer is to under
stand the principles underlying his
work. Mistakes will thereby be avoid
ed. Effort will be intelligently direct
Ell. Crops and profits will be large.
The school garden is the broad basis
for such success. The boys and girls
there trained to experiment with grow
ing crops, with soils and fertilizers,
wild be prepared to gain far more at
our agricultural colleges than present
students do. Those who enter schools
of forming and gardening today spend
much time on simple elementary work
that is distasteful to their mature
minds but which is a necessary train
ing for the true work of the farmers
college When teachers are trained to
undertake this work in the school in
connection with school gardens. the
boys who enter agricultural colleges
and scicnti ic schools generally will
gain broader and deeper education ehere
because they bring to their tasks bet
ter trained minds. The many who pass
at once from school to productive life,
by their studies of the underlying prin-
ciples of plant and animal life in and
about the school gardenL will have
been so trained to scientific ways of
thought and definite, purposeful work |
that they may avail themselves of the
wealth of knowledge placed at the dis
posal of e 'ucated farmers by the many |
government experiment stat ions and by |
he divisions of the agricultural de- !,
nartment at Washington.
Mental Power and Mechanical Skill.
School gardening gives mental train
ng as we'll as muscular exercise, and
mental training of the best kind. Psy-
biologists aver that discipline in one
department. of the mind is not carried
over into other departments. Fre-
luently celebrated scholars are sadly
deficient in practical ability outside
their own field. Skill in arithmetic is
valuable for bookkeeper or like
workman, but it does not aid materi-
ally in making good bread or growing
good vegetables The boy who under
stands English grammas can talk cor
reetly'-if he will-and can write bet
ter letters, yet may be no ADLER me-
ehanic or business man in most res
poets. Skill in one field is not trans |
ferred to another departments of the |
mind to any marked degree. How NO
cessary then, that country boy
should be trained to think in terms Of
plants and animals tools and soils, as
well as with words and numbers, with
pen and paper. Further. all children,
in city moro than in country. need 10