48 BASES FOR CURRICULUM MAKING 



comes the order accompanied by the decline of the quarter-sec- 

 tion farm type. 27 Nature is of fundamental importance in the 

 farming occupation. In this fact there may be some basis for the 

 age-long prejudice of the farmer against "book-farming" or the 

 advice of outsiders, be they college experts, agricultural teachers, 

 board of trade members, bankers, or what not. If so, the recog- 

 nition of the fact and the re-directing of our plans in accordance 

 with right principles may do more to further proper agricultural 

 education than is now supposed. 28 Nature will be of supreme 



importance in the future properly diversi- 



When competition fied, privately or co-operatively owned, 

 becomes intense in intensive farm unit. Moreover, nothing 

 agriculture, " n a- will do more to promote such an ideal 

 ture" will be of su- state than an agricultural education 

 preme importance. which adequately trains selected groups 



for types of work for which nature has 



best fitted them. But this is vocational guidance ! Agricultural 

 leaders will be the last to consent to any Prussian system of de- 

 termination which assigns a child to a particular line of life 

 work. And rightly so, for vocational guidance of this kind should 

 be smothered in its beginnings. 



Vocational direction and advice are very different things 

 from vocational determination as it would be conceived by an 

 industrial or political autocrat. They are best illustrated by re- 

 cent studies in educational guidance. Such studies are trying to 

 discover the aptitudes of the pupils chiefly for the pupils' sakes. 

 Incidentally they will lay the best possible basis for the studies 

 of the industries in the interests of both the pupils and the indus- 

 tries. Ultimately it will be the finding by and the fitting of the 

 child for his best place in society. Vocational direction would 



27. Big scale production means highly trained directors 

 controlling groups of laborers and making use of specialists. 

 Many people, however, are not ready to concede that this type 

 of rural organization is either advisable or generally probable. 



28. Agricultural education is far from being generally ac- 

 cepted amongst farmers today. That it is not is only too evi- 

 dent to those who have daily to deal with the man on the job. 



