DAIRY AND SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETINGS. 205 



from Ohio, the man just before you was from Kentucky, and 

 you are from Indiana." That is a common occurrence. Now 

 if you should train in any community for only the vocations 

 represented in that community, ten years after the young people 

 have been fitted for some vocation the majority of them, or 

 half of them, will be somewhere else, and they may be where 

 the particular vocation for which they are prepared is not rep- 

 resented at all. 



I am simply mentioning some of the problems ; they are hard 

 ones; and yet I believe we will meet this insistent demand for 

 vocational training. How we are going to meet it nobody 

 knows yet. It is a problem worth thinking about, however, 

 because as I said at the beginning, this problem of education is 

 the greatest problem, the most interesting problem, that con- 

 fronts us in America today, because our whole future is 

 wrapped up in it. 



There are a few things, it seems to me, that we must not 

 forget in our thinking about vocational education. In the first 

 place, the schools that are now established can render a far 

 greater service if their attention is turned toward vocation more 

 than it has been in the past. Many young people select a voca- 

 tion largely by chance. I believe that the school could con- 

 tribute greatly toward a real vocation in after life by having 

 the boys and girls give attention to the various requirements of 

 vocations and what they will ultimately mean so far as perma- 

 nency of employment is, concerned. What are the qualities a 

 man should have who is to succeed in a selected vocation? 

 What are the chances of rising in a certain vocation above the 

 ordinary workman? There are a great many questions that 

 come up. I have in mind now a school in a western city that 

 for the last two or three years has been giving conscious 

 directed attention to this very subject. Every boy and girl has 

 been given a very definite opportunity to find out some of the 

 things about the vocation which he or she may have in mind. 

 A little study of the field of a vocation will many times be a 

 determining factor in the selection or rejection. We suffer in 

 America a great deal from vocations selected at random. 



A great deal has been said in recent years about keeping the 

 boysi on the farm. Now that is the thing to do if that is where 

 the boy ought to be, but it would have been a sorry day for 



