VOCATIONAL AGRICULTUEAL EDUCATION 23 



and valuable experiment stations in methods of vocational agricul- 

 tural education. Perhaps it is not too much to say that out of 

 the verj' weakness of some of these schools in land and equipment 

 is coming the best strength of the whole movement for a type of 

 agricultural training which shall be genuinely vocational. That 

 is to say, vocational efficiency at the end of the course of training 

 appears to bear no directly proportionate relation to the com- 

 parative amounts of money invested in the school plants and in 

 their cost of operation; and, similarly, it appears to depend more 

 on points of view and on methods among the various staffs, than 

 upon relative faculty numbers and salary budgets. 



Profitable Production the Test of Efficient Training. 



Productive work of a high order of efficiency is coming to be 

 considered the real test of all systems of vocational education of 

 secondary grade. Particularly in vocational agricultural educa- 

 tion, it is coming to be accepted that the training must be such as 

 to develop both skill and managerial ability. The competent 

 farmer must }.)e not only expert in the varied technique of his 

 calling, but also a sound and progressive business manager. 



Spectator versus Participant. 



Neither skill nor business ability can be learned from books 

 alone, nor merely from observation of the work and management 

 of others. Both require active participation during the learning 

 period in productive farming operations of real economic or com- 

 mercial importance. A masterful, constructive imagination may 

 accomplish much for him who possesses it, and for his needs books 

 and observation may finally result in vocational efficiency. The 

 difficulty is that such powerful imagination is so rare as to con- 

 stitute him who has it a genius, far removed from the common run 

 of boys fourteen to eighteen or twenty years of age who live on 

 farms, who expect to follow farming for a living, and whose train- 

 ing is not likely to extend beyond that afforded by the vocational 

 agricultural school. 



