The Birmingham age-herald., 1916-06-18

 SCHOOL GARDENS | IMPORTANT PART OF. l COMMUNITY WORK Commissioner Ward Points Out Advantages of In-
 dividual Gardens
INDUSTRY AND THRIFT
 LOGICAL SEQUENCE
School Gardens a Laboratory in Which the Different Steps of Plant Life Are Illustrated and
 Demonstrated

l President of the City Commission George | B. Ward turned aside from the weighty
 matters of municipal government yester l day to issue a statement on the school garden work. He stated that he regarded
 school garden work and the Boy Scout
 movement as two of the most important 1 developments in modern community life. | His statement follows:
 l q regard the school garden work and l the Boy Scout movement as two of the
 most important developments in modern
 community work.
 They are helping to solve in an unex-
 pected way the boy and girl problem of ] the cities.
 School and home garden work has
 gone along in quiet way in Birmingham 1 for a few years, yet the results have | attracted the attention of outside cities | and of the National School Garden as- | sociation.
 Tt has also attracted the attention of hundreds of parents, who are surprised
 to find there is a way to keep their chill
 dren in their own yards by making their
 yards, back and front interesting and
 profitable.
 "The fact that the city now has under
 supervision between eight and, ten thou sand home gardens shows what may be expected in the future, as the move ment gathers momentum.
 Tn any phase of educational work the first question which presents itself is,
 what is the effect of the exercise or the
 study on the pupil?
 Those who have had most experience n ha or
 phatic in their statements regarding the
 educational value of this work.
 QUICK DISCRIMINATION
 Tt is claimed that quick discrimination
 is one of the pronounced qualities re-
 sulting from it. Skill with the hands is
 necessarily an outcome The handling
 of small seeds and of various tools nat
 urally develops skill and agility. Sys. tematic methods also follow from the nat
 ural order in which the operations con- ducted in the garden must be taken up.
 This not only develops a very inn portant faculty, but at the same time
 teaches the young mind a logical sse-
 quence based upon the natural order of
 things. Industry is not an unimportant result which comes from school garden work.
 ."The idea of ownership and the rights
 or ownership, which comes from the pos session of a garden, induce the pupil to 1 exercise his ability to make his possess 1 sion as good or better than that of | his neighbor. The natural result of this l is industry. Business experience is an important result of harvesting and ac- counting for the products which are grown. The right of ownership and a re- spect for property rights are more large ly developed from the possession of in- dividual gardens than in community gar dens.
 The idea that what's mine is my own because very strongly protected and all rights concerned respected. "On the other hand party interest in community garden does not so em.- phatically develop the idea If individual responsibility, and each one has a ten
 dency to care less for the plants which | another has shared the producing, with the result that responsibility is shir'led, and there is lack of interest with a consequent lack of industry. For this | reason, in our work from the very in- certicn the indivdua. garden flea has been emphasized and strictly adhered to. INDIVIDUAL GARDENS | 'The individual garden has the advan- | tage of allowing each one possessing 1 garden to perform each and every opera | tion connected with the preparation,