RURAL AND AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION 7 



shall we teach? Shall we train for general agricultural intelli- 

 gence or for specific production? The further these studies 

 were urged the more confusion seemed to result. 3 Finally, so 

 far as subject-matter is concerned, this question presented itself: 

 Would it be possible to determine what specific facts or prin- 

 ciples really functioned in successful agricultural production? 

 The answer to this is important, as the results of this study 

 will clearly show and an outline plan for the determination of 

 such working knowledge will be given later. Leaving for the 

 present any further consideration of subject-matter problems, 

 let us state the final question, already suggested and forced into 

 the study, as being vital to the whole field. Do men tend to 

 succeed in farming by virtue of their physical capacity, their 

 special skills their mechanical abilities, their general education, 

 their command of technical facts, or by virtue of a special type of 



intelligence conditioning ability to plan, 



Can the type of man to organize, to risk, etc ? In a word would 

 that tends to sue- it contribute to the discussion if the type 

 ceed in farming be of man could be "brought into the clear" 

 "brought into the the type that tends to succeed even with 

 clear"? a minimum of training, and regardless, 



sometimes, of much preliminary experi- 

 ence ? Would it, perhaps, help to change the focus of our teach- 

 ing from that of imparting useful knowledge about soils, crops, 

 stock and the like to that of training the boy, trying to consider 

 and organize that training around such possible factors as man- 

 agement, business ability, etc? Furthermore, would it give us 

 a basis for directing some boys into such agricultural specialties 

 as poultry raising, truck gardening, and green house work if 

 they appeared to lack those managerial qualities that the general 

 farmer seems to require. 



3. At this point the idea of a job-analysis, applied so well 

 by Allen to trades and industries, seemed to offer a way out of 

 the maze and the writer would like to call attention to some ex- 

 cellent work being done by Kent and Williams in applying this 

 method. He believes that they are overcoming what might be 

 urged as an objection to the Allen idea, namely, that it applies 

 directly to the worker in industry rather than the manager. The 

 farm job is a complex approximating the managerial type some- 

 what more than even the skilled labor type of occupation. 



