the direct supervision of the agricultural teacher, for the purpose of more nearly attaining this ideal.

Frequently, the pupil in vocational agriculture conducts his supervised practice under such artificial conditions that upon leaving the school he has to revert to methods and practices used previous to his vocational-school instruction. Obviously pupils should so conduct their supervised practice that it may be continued as a farm practice. The little project presents more opportunities for artificial development than does a project of the size of a normal enterprise on the farm. For example, a pupil may use an amount of fertilizer on an acre project that would not be financially possible or economically expedient on the whole enterprise as normally conducted on a farm.

Supervised practice activities should be confined, for the most part, to those enterprises that are the backbone of the type of farming which the pupil expects to enter. This does not infer that some practice should not be gained in the manipulative skills of minor enterprises, nor the elimination of information which will handicap the pupil in solving many of the minor problems of the farm. Vocational education in agriculture must confine its instruction to only a small part of all of the operations and decisions encountered on a given farm, and it is therefore reasonable to expect that the pupils should confine most of their efforts to those activities that are most typical and that will return the largest income in proportion to effort. Transfer of training never holds true to 100 per cent. A pupil may become skillful in the feeding of one class of stock and therefore should be able to feed other classes of stock more intelligently than he would had he not received training and experience with the one class of animals, but he will not normally be as skillful in feeding other classes as would be the case had he experience and training in other classes also. To carry the analogy further, if a student intends to become a dairyman, he will know more about dairy feeding if he selects a milk-production project as his supervised practice work rather than the raising of hogs, poultry, or even, in some cases, rabbits. He will learn something of the fundamental principles of feeding cattle, perhaps, from carrying a rabbit project, but it is safe to assume that his knowledge of feeding dairy cattle would be rather meager.

METHODS OF CONDUCTING SUPERVISED PRACTICE

1 As might be expected, the term "supervised practice" has been used to designate various types of supervised practice activities under the national vocational education act. Specific terms have been used, therefore, to designate more or less definite procedures in the

conduct of the work of the individual or the scope of his activities. In this bulletin directed or supervised practice will be designated under the following headings:

1. A project or a piece of work which should embrace all of the activities of a farm enterprise or farm enterprises. 2. Farm jobs or the performing of the activities included in the common and normal subdivisions of work on a farm, such as planting corn or feeding hogs.

3. Job operations or the subordinate and related activities which are smaller in scope than those of a farm job.

4. Cooperative practice or practice in which two or more individuals are cooperating in the conduct of a project or job.

5. Systematic farm labor.

6. Farm management or performing the functions of a farm manager, either in whole or in part, in planning and directing the conduct of the enterprises on a given farm.

The project.

For many years the term "project" has been used to designate carefully planned investigations in agricultural science covering a considerable period of time, frequently demanding several years for their completion. Such plans, including aims and methods, have been submitted by the agricultural experiment stations of the several States and approved by the Office of Experiment Stations in the United States Department of Agriculture.

More recently, the term "project," under practically the same conditions, has been applied to the projects in demonstration work and extension teaching carried out under the Smith-Lever Act. The term carries with it the idea of a program of importance and of some duration and an expectation of certain tangible and valuable results. The term was borrowed first by secondary-school teachers of science and manual arts because its use by experiment stations suggested an idea of value in connection with the practical phases of teaching these subjects.

In connection with the teaching of agriculture in secondary schools, the idea of projects at home crystallized and took on the name of "home project" about 1908 in Massachusetts, receiving the sanction of the State board of education under suitable legislation in 1911. This plan, with modifications which do not change the principal points of definition, had been adopted in most of the States which had constructive legislation on agriculture in the secondary schools previous to the enactment of the national vocational education act. In its work on secondary and elementary school agri

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culture the United States Department of Agriculture had previously accepted the prevailing conception of the home project, issuing several publications on this basis.

Since the term "project" has come into general use in connection with the vocational agricultural pupil, it seems desirable that the term should be defined under two heads-namely, home project and school project. A class project is not included in this definition, as this term will be treated under "Cooperative enterprises."

The home project is a piece of work which is conducted by the pupil on his own farm or on some farm other than that owned and operated by the school board. Such a project is usually conducted largely on the responsibility of the pupil, while in the case of a school project the pupil usually secures only operative practice under the direction of the teacher. The home project should not be confused with other home work which does not comply with the essentials necessary for a desirable piece of systematic work. The term "demonstration project" is sometimes confused with the term "home project." A home project is primarily intended to give the pupil an opportunity to acquire operative or managerial ability or both. A project is never carried on primarily for the purpose of demonstrating to some one other than the pupil himself some definite practice. Demonstration projects are frequently conducted by the teachers, but even in such cases they play only a secondary part in vocational education. The school project is a project conducted on a school farm, a plot of land or area that is either owned or controlled by the local school. Such work does not present a natural setting and hence differs from the home project primarily in that respect.

Essentials of a home project.—The following is an example of a project:

John A. High School of (State), is conducting the following project: John is living in a poultry section and is studying livestock, giving a major portion of his time to the study of poultry. He is carrying a project consisting of 100 laying hens. His work started during the fall term by taking over the care and management of the home poultry flock. The poultry house is being reconstructed by him to meet the needs of his flock and along modern ideas of poultry-house construction. The products are being marketed through the local poultry exchange. The project is to continue indefinitely, though an annual report is to be made to the agricultural instructor based upon carefully kept records. John is conducting the project during the first year on a share basis with the option of buying the flock and equipment at the end of the first year. He is to have full management of the flock under the advice and approval of the agricultural instructor, financial aid for running expenses to be given by the owner and to be paid back with interest up until such time as the project can support itself.

a member of the vocational agricultural class of the

The essentials of the home project can be drawn from the eight criteria previously stated at the beginning of Part II, page 6.

Importance of the project in a program of supervised practice.While there are various other ways in which the pupil may secure his supervised practice work, yet every pupil should be encouraged to carry a project. The project offers an opportunity for the development of initiative and a sense of responsibility through ownership that can not be obtained from any other form of supervised practice activity. It usually represents a complete cycle in the production of some definite farm product and therefore gives an opportunity for the study of all factors which bear upon the production of this product. These two reasons are sufficient to cause the project to be a definite part of every pupil's supervised practice program.

Farm jobs.

The doing of separate farm jobs for supervised practice has been commonly referred to as supplementary farm practice. It is frequently found that the pupil does not receive sufficient experience in farming when conducting a single farm enterprise. This can be readily understood when we realize that there would be very little carry over in training from experience in the preparation of seed corn to the preparation of seed potatoes for planting. Students may have neither the opportunity nor the time to conduct an enterprise of potato growing, but they may readily find the time to plan and perform a single job as that indicated above, "preparation of seed potatoes for planting."

This type of instruction is usually supplementary to that of the project work and adds to the experience of the pupil in farming operations. A satisfactory way of determining the jobs which a pupil should perform as supplementary farm practice can be easily determined from a chart similar to the following:

NOTE.-Numerals indicate pupils. Boys 1, 2, 3, and 4 have a corn project and boys 5 and 6 have a potato

project.

By means of a chart similar to that just given, the teacher and pupil can readily determine the supplementary farm jobs which should be performed in order to receive a maximum of instruction

in operative and managerial ability. Such a chart may be drawn large enough to enable the teacher to write the pupil's name against the job which he desires the pupil to perform, or if a smaller chart is found feasible the pupil can be given a number and his number inserted under the job in a like manner. Such farm jobs should be as carefully planned and executed as any occurring in the project.

Job operations.

There are certain supervised practice activities which are introduced primarily for the purpose of developing operative skill. There are usually no decisions in connection with such activities. It may be simply the act of developing skill in making a cleft graph, budding a tree, operating a lead on a spraying machine, and the like. Such work should, of course, be a part of the instructing process though frequently it may be designated as a definite part of a supervised practice program. This form of supervised practice is very frequently conducted on school farms, though often it may be carried out to the home farm or some farm in the community. The value of such practice is, of course, limited largely to the securing of operative skill to meet certain standards of speed and accuracy.

Cooperative enterprises.

The cooperative enterprise or project is a more recent development in supervised practice programs. In this type of supervised practice, as the term implies, no one pupil is entirely responsible for the success or failure of the enterprise. Decisions as to procedure are made by all of the individuals concerned. The actual manipulative effort in cooperative enterprises may be done by individuals or by the group as a whole or by individuals taking turns. The main objective of a cooperative enterprise is to familiarize pupils with the problems of cooperative effort. Cooperative enterprises, however, offer another advantage over the individual project or home project, and this lies in the scope of the activity. Dairying can be carried on by a class as a whole, whereas it might be impossible for a single individual to be able to secure a unit large enough to conduct the dairying as a commercial enterprise. The same thing would be true in connection with many other phases of farming. Where cooperative enterprises are conducted, the group involved in the cooperative work should be organized and run as any commercial organization should be run, namely, by election of officers, allotting of responsibilities, providing a schedule of activities for each individual and submitting to the entire group problems for decision. Such enterprises usually involve financial interest through the individual pupil's buying a share in the cooperative effort. Several such cooperative enterprises have been conducted in the several States during the past few years. The following is an example of a cooperative project: