The Wanganui Chronicle. "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1906. RURAL EDUCATION.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume L, Issue 12133, 1 December 1906, Page 4

The Wanganui Chronicle. "Nulla Dies Sine Linea." SATURDAY, DECEMBER 1, 1906. RURAL EDUCATION.

The remarkable success which has attended the efforts <cf the .Wanganui Horticultural; Society to er.ioourage the children attending the schools of the ' district to tiafee aii interest in the fascinating and profitable work of gardening is a matter for congratulation. The fine display made in the children's classes at yesterday's Show, both as regards the'numbers and quality of the k exhibits, musib have, been ins gratifying to tflie officers and members of the Society as it was pleasing to the public. While fully alivei to the excellence of the local demonstration, and. the good Woirk of which it was an evidence, wo notice with pleasure that a decided forward movement has.been, made in the direction, of imparting the. elementary principles of lagricultur© to the children attending rural schools: in otlier districts. Peu.-ha.ps nowhere has the movement attained such importance as * it has at Papatoitoi. But, as the "New 1 Zealand Farmers' Weekly" explains, there is a reason for1 this, of course, rs j there is for all conspicuous successes. Mr.-J. W. Sumner, the head teacher of the Papatoitoi District School, is a man whose work isi both painstaking and . thorough. Nor does he stack at trifles. [Six years ago, when some of the children attending his school started to compete for the Home Garden prizes, offered by the Auckland Horticultural Society, a little thing happened that set him thinking. Cecrtiam of the competitors objected tp anofthetr competitor because, as they, alleged, h© had assistance in, his garden—it was not, in fact, bis work, nor did he plan, tend, 01" dej velop it himself. It was not easy to get at the actual. facts, but there was an evident lack of supervision in connection with the competitors, and Mr. Sumner set himse'Jf to remedy thiei, by arranging for small gau-derts to. be start--1 ed by those interested in the- school gardens. He began, as a matter of fact, with one small school plot as an object lesson. That one plot proved so successful that others were formed the following year, and, this year finds more than a third of the children on the roll —47 out of 108—actively tending their flower and vegetable gardens. According to the representative of the "Farm- . ers' Weekly," a first sight of the echool suggests "the home beautiful." In his description of what ho saw, ihe says:— » "The school buildings in themselves'are not at all ungraceful. Built on pleasing lines, they-form a fine background to the flower bods, \tenriis court, lawns, 'and shrubbery, which meetVtiio eye of the visitor as h© approaches the school j house. The flower gardens extend along I the full length of the grounds, and face jtihe main road from Otahuhu. As most of the plants were in full bloom at the timo of our visit, the g.wdens presented a. very gay appearance. i Wo found the children hard at work v tidying up,' as the judges were expected to put in an appearance that afternoon to ' inspect | the gardens, and to make ftMrj- awards. If the- flower gardens, whicfr a^e mostly lun by the girls, wore goid, the vegetable gardens .were in many respects, even better. They had evidentfy been intelligently planned, well tilled and carefully attended to. .Not a weed was visible In some of the plots no less than 26 different varieties of vegetables an<\ culinary herbs wore under, cultivaj tioii, nixl one of the flower 'gardens (a boy's1) waa carrying as many as 53 different kind? of flowering plants; with 43 in bloom. Several gin's had 39 varieties of flowering plants in their plots-, and of these 35 wore in bloom—and all this on little garden plots averaging not more than twenty feet by sieven. Better than this, each boy and girl was able to distinguish between the several varieties, and also to say just when the seed should be sown, at what depth it ahiould be planted ; how high the plant would grow, at what period it would bloom, and when (in the case of vegotables) it "would be ready for ttake uso —no small matters those to boys and girls, scarcely any of whom are over 14 yearn of age, wOwfe many are under 12." Thero can bo no doubt that what lias been accomplished at Papatoitoi should be just as readily accomplished elsewhore. The school gardens at Papattoitoi are a. development, rather than j the outcome of a concerted movement, 'and a careful perusal of the larticle | written' by the special representative | of the "Farmers' Weekly," clearly in- , dicates that the teacher's work goes far enough on the lines of what is needed, to make a veiy good ground work for future training! in agriculture. It is something to fainiharis© the minds of the children with the names and cha<ractetrieitios of seeds, the varying- depths |at which they should be planted, the .nature of the plant germinated' from them; tihe date it'flowers,, or is available for uso, and co forth. It is good, moreover, to know that children are <r&ceiving instruction in trenching, draining, eto., and leiamin,g how to- utilise the seasons to the best possible advantage, so far as cropping is concerned. "But necessarily," as the "Farmers' Weekly" points out in the course of lan appreciative editorial1, "this sort of thing only touches the fringe of the movement for .agricultural education. Nothing better than the Papatoitoi work isr really wanted, although its extent and character may bo passably improved upon, for tihe very simple reason that Mr. Sumner's woirk lias be&n the outcome of the exigencies of his

position. The school garden was seen to be needed by Mr. Sumner six years ago. TlkvE", needless to say, was before the agitation had set in for africultural education in the primary schools of the State, and it Ui possible the gardens would never have been started had the demand com© fmlfc. The credit belongs to Mr. Sumner for starting and keeping the school gardens going at Papatoitoi, but the Auckland Horticultural Society's children's garden competitions really gave rise to the idea, and the whole course of instruction now followed' has been evolved therefrom. Mr. •Sumner and other® like him (the Mauriesvillo West schoolmaster, for instance, who is now acting as the Wellington Board of Education's instructor in agriculture) worked largely in the dark as to the public requirements. But "there can be no doubt in the mind of any thoughtful man that the results obtained are just what were- wanted." The same journal holds, in viewing the matter from the farmer's point of view, that the problem involved in the question, "How can we interest our boys and girls sufficiently to induce them to remain, at home and help in the work of the farm?" would appear to have beeii largely solved by the Papaitoitoi experiment.. "The children," it says, "must not only be interested in their work, but they must have something practical to engage their attention and enlasit their energies. They must be in sufficient sympathy with their work or studies to prompt them fo go out of their way to make investigations on their own account. Their faculties and powers of observation require to 'be drawn put, and they need to be made to feel that they are''doing 'something that is at once useful and helpful to their1 friends.. The Papatoitoi results; pqint to all this having been accomplished1, and possibly a good 'deal more. With the help of their teacher the boys and girils who have been allot, ted garden plots \are engaged in eluoi- | dating Nature's. secrete, and this they appear to be doing very faithfully and wel. Under the old regime probably every one lof these boys and girls would have passed out of the school, unable , \o distinguish one seed from another, and with little or no knowledge of how and when to plant them. The experience gained is likely to prove simply invaluable in (after life; it liaises, and has raised, questions of how far the weather affects growing crops; the prevalent winds and their effect, aiwl entails making observations on sunshine, tempeat, calm and storm, &o that the boy becomes Veatherised,' almost unconsciously. The interest he takes in his vegetables iand flowere, the things he gets to know about them, all tend to stimulate and increase his interest in agricultural, concerns, and thus the, training which the* school garden entails bids fair to become, one of the most useful auxiliaries we have in keeping young meni and young women upon the farms." From this it will be seen how important is the good work which "the local Horticultural Society bass set itself so enthusiastically to encourage. We feeCi sure that the Society, inspired by tho success a:!tready achieved, will ented* still more heartily into the move'- j ment, and we shall not 'be surprised if by this time next year tEey "have, with , the sympathetic and practical co-opera-■ton of the teachers, brought the schools of the Wangan.ui district well to the front in the matter of school gardens, ■and a-ural education generally.