Course building in vocational agriculture

Before the school year begins vocational agriculture teachers are faced with the problem of what jobs to teach. Agricultural educators have indicated that instruction should be based on the farming needs of each individual student. Instruction based on student's individual farming needs further complicates the problem of what jobs to teach, because teachers do not know exactly what these individual needs are. This difficulty can be overcome somewhat by making surveys to explore the student's home farm conditions. Perhaps through the use of survey forms and much hard work a vocational agriculture teacher may effectively determine the individual farming needs of his students. Once these needs are determined the vocational agriculture teacher is directly faced with building an effective and usable course of study. This is not a minor problem, nor one that should be dismissed with little thought or concern. Evidently many teachers have difficulty with this problem, and the need exists for a study such as this.

Teachers of vocational agriculture in Hardin County have indicated their difficulty in developing courses of study which are practical and workable for their departments. The writer hopes this study will help overcome some of these difficulties.