Description

The established position which School Gardening and Connected Handwork have come to occupy in the elementary school curriculum during recent years is an indication of a marked change in point of view among official educational authorities as to the manner in which the child should be trained to play his part in due course as a worthy and efficient citizen. On their first appearance in the rural school time-table the introduction of these subjects was criticized by some as tending towards vocational training and utilitarianism and, as such, as being out-of-place in primary education. Education in the real sense, however, is not so much a matter of acquisition of knowledge in one specific subject or another as of the awakening of the individual to his own latent powers of achievement, the development of a consciousness that his duty to himself and the community in general is to put them to best use, and the fundamental preparation to fit him to do so. Granted that education is the business of the State, it is inevitable that the primary concern during the school life of the child must be the development of the citizen rather than the production of the scholar.