Teachers in these schools are enabled to support themselves at least partially from the sale of fruits, berries, vegetables, honey, etc., but this was not the chief inducement in starting school gardens. The writer last quoted continues: “The desire to add something to the low salaries of the village school teachers, and, on the other hand, to acquaint as much as possible, not only children, but also grown-up people, with gardening, sericulture, and apiculture, has caused an increase during the last ten years, in the number of school gardens, apiaries, and silkworm hatcheries. In 1892 there were about two thousand school gardens in Russia. At the present time [1897] there are 7,521, with 532 apiaries, and 372 silkworm hatcheries.”
Mr. Mescherski, who is chief of one of the departments of agriculture, and one of the principal advocates of school gardens in Russia, has stated the object of school gardens and their significance as follows: “School gardens ... are of importance on the following grounds. (1) Hygienic, as being a place for physical labor in the open air, so necessary for the teacher and pupils.... (2) Scientific educational, as acquainting children with the life of useful plants, developing their minds by the study of nature, and promoting in the rising generation a regard for labor and a more moral and æsthetic sentiment concerning trees. (3) General economical ... and (4) personal economical,” which refers to the support of the teacher.
Christians should encourage rural life
If the Russian government, on the liberation of its serfs and its crown peasants, found it so greatly to its advantage to establish school gardens, of what lasting benefit would they be to Christians! Protestants, instead of crowding into the cities where the laboring man is subject to the trades unions, trusts, and monopolies, should seek for themselves a few acres of land, and should see that schools are established for the education of their children where the mechanical text-book grind is replaced by the study of God’s will as revealed in His Word and works. Nature studies thus conducted, instead of developing doubt, will strengthen the faith of the pupil, and the students from such schools will be fitted for citizenship not only in the governments of earth but in the Kingdom of God. This also is a part of the system of instruction known as Christian education.
XVII
CHRISTIAN EDUCATION (Continued)
Education defined by Pestalozzi
The nineteenth century has not been lacking in minds which have grasped, at least in part, the principles of Christian education. Thus writes Pestalozzi: “Sound education stands before me symbolized by a tree planted near fertilizing waters.... In the newborn child are hidden those faculties which are to unfold during life. The individual and separate organs of his being form themselves gradually into an harmonic whole, and build up humanity in the image of God.”[184]