This year the Modern Pioneers are raising peanuts, and Irish potatoes. Plans for cooperative marketing of these products have been worked out with the assistance of the railroad agricultural agent and the vocational agriculture teacher.

The organization has been in operation a year now. These new farmers are making headway. They practice cooperation. They believe in the live-athome idea. They barter surplus products for articles they need. They are building real homes. They meet and study their problems utilizing the facilities of the vocational agriculture department of the local high school.

Calico Rock with variations can be duplicated in the vocational agriculture service in hundreds of communities. Here is an approach to education that looks beyond the school youth to the whole community in which he must live. The good teacher not only knows his community's problems and needs but he aids both youths and adults to help solve their own and the community problems through education.

A member of the Calico Rock Chapter of the Future Farmers of America, national club of boys studying vocational agriculture, helps survey lands occupied by the Modern Pioneers.

How Vocational Agricultural Teachers Went Into Action to Help Farmers to Understand and Cooperate Intelligently on National Emergency Measures.1

A

SICK body, a sputtering gas engine, or irregular functioning machines of any kind are out of adjustment. They need tuning; they need care; they need attention; they require study. The same is true of our agricultural situation.

Intelligent adjustment calls for education. When people have a valid interest in a situation, a desire to understand it and the will to improve conditions, you have the potential elements of worthwhile adjustment-a chance for getting things back into a better relationship. Those involved must know something of the whys and wherefores in an adjustment program and education is, therefore, the key to success in any attempted program. What we do not understand we naturally oppose.

AAA

The Agricultural Adjustment Act of May 1933 set in operation a plan which, according to M. L. Wilson, Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, was

"designed to restore to farmers the pre-war pur-
chasing power of the domestically consumed
portion of their farm crops. The plan included
a democratic method of farmer-adjustment of
production to effective demand. To make it
possible for individual farmers to adjust their
production, the plan provided for the distribution
of benefit payments derived from taxes collected
from processors."

When the Agricultural Adjustment Act went into effect the farmer had many new situations to face and many new problems to consider. There were new angles to farming and new decisions with which the American farmer had not been face to face. The same was true of the teacher of vocational agriculture who was charged with the responsibility of carrying forward a regular systematic, farmer-training program. There were cooperative production control contracts, marketing agreements, as well as licenses applying to dozens of commodities. There were thousands of acres of land to be retired from production of crops in which there were surpluses. There were problems of what efficient use could be made of land by planting substitute crops.

The Agricultural Adjustment Act within a very short time changed the American farming picture entirely. But most significant of all it meant that education was needed as never before. It meant a new and added responsibility for vocational From an address delivered by W. A. Ross, specialist in agricultural education, Office of Education, U. S. Department of the Interior.

education in agriculture. It meant explaining, demonstrating, discussing with farmers the various angles of adjustment. It meant promoting thinking, encouragement, gathering facts, and helping the farmer educate himself to the new order of things. To vocational educators in agriculture it meant assisting in hundreds of ways to bring about a desirable readjustment of farming on a more sound economic basis.

Going into action

Realizing the importance of the adjustment program, a call for a conference was issued through the agricultural education service of the United States Office of Education in May 1934. The immediate purpose of the conference was to consider in detail objectives and procedures with regard to Government. adjustment measures affecting farming and farmer-training. There were present at this conference 25 State and national leaders in the field of agricultural education, and a similar number of leaders from the Agricultural Adjustment Adminis tration, Farm Credit Administration, and other emergency agencies. The theme was "Vocational Agriculture in Relation to Economic and Social Adjustments." A study was made of the emergency and long-time features of programs affecting agriculture and especially the part the teacher of vocational agriculture could take in these programs. States were stimulated to carry on. Several helpful publications were issued based on the results of the May conference.

Some of the outstanding adjustment work by teachers of vocational agriculture took place in the South during 1933-34 in connection with the retiring of cotton acreage. More than 800 teachers in cotton communities took part in the cotton acreage reduction campaign. They traveled 634,000 miles at an average cost per instructor of about $40 paid out of their own pockets. They held 3,700 farmer meetings attended by 247,000 farmers. They contacted 164,000 farmers individually. What did they accomplish? These teachers held meetings, explained the adjustment plan and contracts to growers; served as advisers and committeemen; directed others; worked with the county agent; distributed literature; measured acreage; taught farmers how to check acreages and estimate yields and acted as special collaborators and inspectors. A recent summary of reports from the supervisors of agricultural education in the principal cotton-growing States shows that teachers of vocational agriculture held approximately 21,000 evening class meetings between July 1 and December 15, 1934, dealing with economic cotton information. The total attendance at these evening class meetings with adult farmers was approximately 653,000. The scope of this type of cooperation was greatly increased the succeeding year.

A similar story can be told about the wheat States. Teachers gave instruction to 75,000 farmers, which called for a total of 1,700 days of time and 50,000 miles of travel.

In connection with the cotton, wheat, corn-hog, and tobacco programs, an effort has been made to organize the most helpful

9

teaching material possible. Trained vocational educators were called to Washington to collaborate with representatives of the AAA on this undertaking. The results thus far have been gratifying. Real assistance in the organization of subject matter has been given to an already overloaded teacher.

The educational activities of vocational agriculture in connection with the AAA illustrate similar cooperation on other important phases of the national adjustment program, including work with the Farm Credit Administration, the FERA, CCC camps, Subsistence Homesteads, Land Planning, Rural Rehabilitation, Emergency Education, Soil Erosion, and other similar agencies.

Teachers have adjusted their farmer-training program to be in tune with the times, meeting the new situation as they found it, but always serving from the educational angle rather than as an agency of promotion. Adult evening classes were the quickest avenue of approach for immediate REMEDY on adjustment, but the work with the Future Farmers of America enrolled in all-day and part-time schools continues to offer the opportunity to build for the CURE, if there is one.

Vocational agriculture has had to face a set of practically new conditions in agriculture in the past 2 years. The field of farm management and economics, for example, has been revolutionized; much material dealing with these subjects has become obsolete. The practices in farm credit and farm finance have also been greatly altered. Production-control measures have changed former practices governing labor, crop, livestock and land management. Then we must consider the recognition now being given the part-time farmers-those living on small acreages adjacent to industrial centers, and the hundreds of thousands who are returning to rural areas.

Surely, a constant intelligent adjustment, guided by training and education, would call for less drastic and abrupt adjustments than we have been experiencing and witnessing since about 1929. From the standpoint of education there is no more practical policy to follow than that of continuous schooling.

PORTRAIT
of a

Vocational Teacher

OW DO vocational teachers help people in need? Who are these teachers? What do they do? What is their training? What are their aims?

There are in the United States more than 20,000 teachers of vocational education. But it is useless to attempt to tell what they do in terms of statistics because each teacher faces different conditions. Each teacher must find his own answer to the problems of his own community and the problems of each student.

Therefore let us look in on the life of one representative vocational education teacher-Mark Jordon, of Chiefland, Fla. He lives 6 miles from the Suwannee River-a corn-hog-peanut country. Very sandy. A relatively new farming country populated largely by Alabamans. Mark Jordon is a teacher of vocational agriculture. His headquarters is the Chiefland High School to which busses bring 400 children from the countryside every school day.

Mark Jordon this year won the award of "Master Teacher" among 2,000 teachers of vocational agriculture in the Southern States. What did he do to merit this honor? What has he done to help the citizens of the Chiefland district during the national emergency?

If you had visited the Chiefland school on many an evening last year, you would have found it surrounded by automobiles. Inside in the auditorium you would have found more than 100 farmers eagerly listening to a discussion of the AAA. Washing

Training Relief Teachers of Agriculture

DURING 1933-34 South Carolina had 200 relief teachers of Agriculture employed. The Department of Agriculture Education of Clemson College, in cooperation with the State supervisors of agricultural education, trained these teachers in five centers. In most cases these trainees were experienced farmers familiar with the needs of those receiving relief. Teachers of vocational agriculture under the guidance of the supervisors and teacher-trainers gave most of the actual instruction.

A general survey was made first at each center to determine what should be taught. Among the activities selected were culling poultry, delousing hens, building log poultry houses, remodeling buildings for poultry houses, feeding dairy cows, feeding hens, butchering hogs, sugar curing meat, and making a compost heap. After a week of intensive training the trainees returned to their home communities and started their teaching with needy families. For several months afterward they assembled once a month to discuss their work, methods of reaching more families and rendering new services. A similar program was carried on in South Carolina during 1935.

ton had reached a long arm into Chiefland. Something new had happened to farming. There were new words-crop restriction-allotments-corn-hog checks-contracts. What did they mean? Should a person sign a contract?

What did

it involve? The emergency acts brought Chiefland farmers to the school and there Mark Jordon, the vocational teacher, undertook to discuss and explain the AAA. In place of confusion came orderly, intelligent consideration. That is education for adults. Vocational teachers teach adults as well as high-school boys and girls.

Or suppose you had visited the Chiefland High School this last winter. On the big school ground-10 acres you would have seen workers busy planting shrubbery, making brick walks, erecting fences. Some are elderly. Some are high-school boys and girls. The elderly workers are from Chiefland's relief rolls. Under Jordon's direction-with the vocational agriculture students participating-they are beautifying the school grounds. And the boys are learning elements of landscaping. Bushes are being unloaded from the big school truck. Jordon seized the opportunity of an offer of free shrubbery from a big nursery. His students went with him to select plants and bushes.

Sequel

This incident has a sequel. Beautifying the school grounds created an interest in beautification of Chiefland homes. This spring in the evening Jordon taught a class of women-mothers of his day-time students, many of them. They want to learn landscaping, raising flowers, and the care of roses. As a teacher his aim is to help the citizens make Chiefland a happier and more satisfying place to live. That is the aim of all vocational teachers. Mark Jordon is 34 years old, and a graduate of the University of Florida. But his greatest desire is to continue his education; to learn more so that he can serve his community more intelligently. His tanned face shows that he is no deskbound teacher of agriculture. He works with his students on their individual farm projects and on the school demonstration farm.

By what stars does Mark Jordon, vocational teacher, lay his course? His program is definite. The programs of all voca

tional teachers are definite. Following are nine accepted standards of teaching.

1. Thorough knowledge of community.-Jordon knows the exact home location of each student. He knows the amount, value, and uses of all the land in his region; the livestock, amount and value of crops. He has this all down in usable records.

2. Instruction.-His courses are set up to meet the needs of his community disclosed by his survey.

3. Enrollment. He measures his enrollment in agricultural courses against the estimated proportion of Chieflanders who will become farmers.

4. Preparation for and methods of instruction.-Jordon prepares a course of study and farm projects for each student according to each student's particular need.

5. Supervised farming practice.-Jordon helps his students plan their practice farming so that they will (a) learn manipulative skills-that is, ability to do things with their hands, carpentry, mechanics, etc., (b) ability to manage a farm efficiently, (c) ability to cooperate with others, and (d) most important of all, the ability to create a satisfying and beautiful home.

6. Equipment of school.-Jordon must see that the testing devices, library, and laboratory equipment of his school are adequate to teach modern farming.

7. Leadership. A going Future Farmer of America chapter, winning poultry judging teams, cooperative buying and selling associations, and numerous other activities stand witness to Jordon's work in helping to develop the latent leadership in the community.

8. Publicity program. This, too, is the task of the teacher. Not propaganda, but publicity in the sense of keeping the community informed about the work of the school. Vocational agriculture students write regularly for local papers. In local store windows they set up exhibits to show how to tell the difference between good and bad eggs.

9. Condition of teachers' reports.-Last, but not least, the good teacher is judged by the thoroughness, accuracy, and scope of the records of the educational program.

These are standards by which vocational teachers test the quality of the service they are giving to their communities.

Class cares for four needy children

"In some instances the home economics teacher has, with the assistance of high-school pupils, worked out clothing and food lists which have been distributed by ERA workers. In one community the home economics classes took for their special problems four underprivileged families in the community. The needs of these families were studied, after which contact was made with the social service agency which assisted in procuring food and clothing which was distributed to these families by the school girls after school. Several teachers report that high-school girls are interested in bringing to class special problems about some underprivileged family. Sometimes this becomes a case problem for the teacher and the high-school pupil to find out specific needs and help secure employment and follow other procedures for bringing relief to the family."

-Report from Louisiana.