250 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



other wage-earning or productive work on the farm. Vocational agri- 

 cultural education is, thus, one phase of effort toward conserving the 

 valuable years of youth for the best uses of both society and the 

 individual. 



There is now a general movement throughout our country for 

 agricultural education of secondary grade. There are probably not 

 fewer than 500 secondary schools in which agriculture is now seriously 

 taught. The training varies from the study of an agricultural text- 

 book in the hands of the general teacher, who does not bring to her 

 task any special training, to the out-and-out vocational school, where 

 the teachers are specialists in agriculture. 



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

 sidered the real test of all systems of vocational education of secondary 

 grade. Particularly in vocational agricultural education it is coming 

 to be accepted that the training must be such as to develop both skill 

 and managerial ability. The competent farmer must be not only 

 expert in the varied technique of his calling but also a sound and 

 progressive business manager. 



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 pro- 

 ductive farming operations of real economic or commercial importance. 

 In general, if there is a defect in the large agricultural schools which 

 boys must leave home in large numbers to attend, and which, in order 

 to secure adequate attendance to justify their cost, must apparently 

 limit their training to six or eight fall and winter months, it is the 

 defect of putting too great reliance on books and observation, to the 

 exclusion during the intensive learning periods of active participation 

 in the type or types of productive farming the boys intend to follow 

 after graduation. Too great, one may almost say in the cases of many 

 of the boys fatal, reliance is put on the ability of the students once well 

 grounded in sound theory at the school to put that theory into suc- 

 cessful practice on their own farms alone and unaided. 



The problem, then, of providing for actual participation both as 

 manager and as worker in productive farming, simultaneously with his 

 classroom instruction, on the part of the boy in the agricultural school 

 may fairly be looked upon as the most startling and stupendous prob- 

 lem in the great field of vocational education. How shall it be solved ? 



Massachusetts has developed a plan for the solution of this prob- 

 lem. A vocational agricultural school may be established by any 



