Page:Oklahoma Arbor and Bird Day, Friday, March Twelfth, 1909.pdf/33

Rh in the garden at home. Here too, he may have a small plot, all his own, on which to exercise the same industry and care he has been taught to use at school. In this home garden he may profit by his school experience and by better planting, more thorough cultivation, careful thinning and the like, bring his plants to complete and more nearly perfect maturity.

Each county superintendent should see that there are prizes offered by the county fair authorities for grains, vegetables, and fruits grown by school children in their home gardens. When this is done and rightly done, parents will not complain that their children take no interest in gardening and teachers will not give voice to that wail now too often heard, "O, what can I do to interest my pupils in the study of agriculture!"—K. L. Hatch.

Other countries, and many of the states of our own country, are making a success in school gardens. Why not Oklahoma?

We must induct into our schools something that will have a tendency to interest our boys and girls in that great and good occupation which is the foundation of all industry,—farming.

There is generally a lack of interest, on the part of our boys and girls, in the things of the farm, that the parent orders the boy or girl to plant certain things under certain conditions without explaining the whys and wherefores. The child simply goes about the task in a mechanical way without concern as to the manner in which he performs it. If the parent would take the time to explain why it should be done thus and so, and at that particular time, the child would become interested and takes pains to do the work in the best manner possible, looking forward to results instead of trying to get the piece of work done as soon as possible.

The school garden is the first principle of the great study of agriculture, and there should be a garden in connection with every school in the state. There is no reason why we should not have them if we will put into practice what knowledge we are now in possession of along this line. One writer has aptly said, "Enough spasmodic theorization on teaching practical agriculture and aesthetic Nature Study has been expended to pay off the national debt. Let us pass into the next stage of the argument and get down to the ways and means."

The importance of the school garden is just beginning to be appreciated in this State, but I am sorry to see that many of our teachers still regard it as an experiment of doubtful proprietary. The State normal schools and the Logan County High School have had school gardens for the past two years, and the results have been gratifying in the extreme. However, it still remains for an organized movement to be undertaken along this line by all our public schools. A recent writer struck the keynote when he said "Something more than mere talk is needed if our school grounds are to be made beautiful, and if our children are to have elementary instruction in agriculture. Unless something is done, the grounds will continue to be desolate. The study of agriculture in the country schools must lead the children to investigate for themselves with reference to soil and plant life. Hence the beginnings of the school