The soils and crops class of school in Illinois began the care of a 200-tree apple orchard located on the State road, just a short distance from the school. The following agreement has been made with the owner: The class is to do all of the work of pruning, spraying, picking, and packing the fruit for market. The owner furnishes the spray machine, which will be rented out to other orchardists to help pay for itself. The class is to furnish the spray solution. This is being done through the cooperation of one of the well-known manufacturers of spray materials. The class pays the freight charges for the material used in this demonstration. The owner and the class, or rather the agriculture club, will divide the profits on a 50-50 basis. This project to be of much value must be carried on over a period of years. Farm labor.

A few pupils, and primarily those residing in towns, who have never had the experience of living on a farm or who have had a limited experience in this connection, might find it advantageous, particularly during their first year's instruction in vocational agriculture, to seek employment on a farm doing the regular work which may be assigned to them. Where supervised practice is conducted on this basis there should be a very clear understanding between the employer and the teacher that the teacher has some responsibility in seeing that the pupil receives a maximum amount of training while performing such labor. This type of supervised practice work is not common, but it has been employed in a few cases and should prove a very valuable means of securing supervised practice for the pupil who lives in town since it enables him to gain a background and viewpoint of farming which he could not gain on a small project under town conditions.

Farm management.

The objective in many vocational departments is to prepare farm managers as well as to prepare farm operators or workers. Farm management is meant here to involve those problems in the running of a farm which are not confined strictly to any one enterprise. It involves such questions as the amount of land which might be devoted to each crop, the amount of capital necessary to operate, the securing of such capital, a decision as to where effort should be expended at a given time, etc. This type of work could not readily be classed as a project. The pupil may be employed by the parent on a percentage basis and therefore does not own the farm. Supervised practice in farm management, then, should be conducted largely as a supplementary type of practice and should include, as far as possible, all of the functions of a farm manager.

METHODS OF REPORTING SUPERVISED PRACTICE

Methods of reporting supervised practice activities will necessarily vary with each type of activity and each type of school. This variation is due, primarily, to the objective we have in mind

for each type of activity or type of school and, secondly, to the character of the results which are normally obtained. Therefore, brief consideration is given to the supervised practice activities under the type of instruction as organized at the present time— namely, all-day, day-unit, part-time, and evening schools. Reporting supervised practice in all-day and day-unit schools.

1. Reporting projects.-The pupils should report the projects to their teacher and the teacher to the State office as specific farm enterprises and include complete financial statements covering items of costs and receipts. A great deal of care should be exercised in the making of reports in order that such reports may have value educationally and statistically. In order to report a project, the major product should be taken as a basis. Corn should not be reported merely as corn, but rather as corn for grain, ensilage corn, or sweet corn, as the case may be. Likewise, the yield should be reported in appropriate terms as bushels, tons, or ears, respectively, so that proper comparisons may be made of labor incomes, costs, and the like.

2. Farm jobs should be reported by listing the kind and number of jobs completed. As a rule, the performance of such jobs does not result in a labor income for the pupil, because such labor is seldom paid for. An estimate of the value of such labor is very misleading. The report, however, should include the kinds of jobs performed and the time devoted to such practice.

3. Job operations should be reported simply by giving the time devoted to such practice under appropriate classifications of the kind of work performed. No financial statement should accompany such work.

4. Cooperative enterprises or projects should be reported by the teachers to the State office, giving the names of all the individuals included in the cooperative enterprise, and the results of such enterprises as would be reported under a home project. Teachers should be careful, however, not to allow a duplication of individuals in the financial report.

5. Systematic farm labor should be reported similarly to the reporting of job operations under No. 3.

6. Farm management practice should be reported in terms of the kinds of activities and a financial statement. Income realized as the result of farm-management work should not be included in the financial statement of supervised practice unless such farm management involved ownership, and then only the earnings realized from such ownership should be included.

Reporting supervised practice in part-time schools.

Supervised practice activities of part-time pupils are confined primarily to projects and supplementary farm practice in the form

of separate farm jobs. The scope of the project work of a parttime pupil is frequently larger than that of an all-day pupil and also frequently represents a partnership with the parent. Therefore, the reports of a project by a part-time pupil should include the added information as to whether the project is owned entirely or in part by the pupil, and, if in part, the pupil's share.

Supplementary farm practice should be reported in the same manner that such supplementary practice is reported for all-day and day-unit pupils.

Reporting evening work.

The nature of the supervised practice activities of the evening pupil varies with the type of pupil enrolled in the evening class. Evening pupils, for the purpose of this discussion, may be classified under two general heads-namely, those who are in attendance at the evening class for the purpose of increasing their efficiency in the work in which they are already engaged and those who are in attendance at the evening class for the purpose of securing instruction in some new phase of farming activity.

The supervised practice activities of the first group, or those who are seeking instruction to increase their efficiency, will consist largely in the planning and the carrying out of such changes as are agreed upon as an improvement of either a part or the whole of a farm enterprise being conducted on the farm and studied in the class. The teacher should therefore report the farm jobs which have been changed or improved as the result of evening class instruction. Where possible, the teachers and pupils should evaluate the results of such improvements. The second group of pupils-namely, those who are studying some new farm enterprise-should be expected to carry out all of the activities involved in the new enterprise and make a corresponding report. This report may be similar to that given for project work in the all-day school.

PART III

RESPONSIBILITIES FOR THE CONDUCT OF SUPERVISED PRACTICE

RESPONSIBILITY OF THE PUPIL

The vocational agricultural pupil is the one person who must do the farm practice set up in the act and the State plans, and hence is the one person who must be held directly responsible for it. Where the pupil does not accept this responsibility he can not be recognized as a bona fide pupil of vocational agriculture under the national vocational education act. The term "responsibility” here is used in its broadest sense and is held to mean that the pupil is not only to do but is also to be held responsible for doing the farm practice. In differentiating between the responsibility of the pupil and that of the teacher attention is called to the fact that the pupil conducts the farm practice, while the teacher's responsibility is for the supervision of such practice. Through the combined efforts of the pupil and the teacher there is secured that phase of the instruction known as supervised practice.

Factors in the selection of the practice.

There are several factors that will necessarily enter into the selection of the supervised practice, and because of this fact considerable thought should be given to them by the pupil.

Facilities for supervised practice.-One of the first acts of the pupil is to determine the facilities at his command with which to carry on satisfactory farm practice under supervision. This information should be at hand even before the pupil decides upon the type of work that he expects to carry out. Too often the pupil enrolling in an agricultural class selects a project in some enterprise without giving any thought as to his ability for carrying it out. The pupil should determine his supervised practice as carefully as the teacher does the content of his course. In order to determine the type of supervised practice that the pupil should undertake and the facilities for carrying it out, the following procedures may be noted:

1. A survey of the farm should be made to indicate the type of farming, character of soil, location, equipment, and

the like.

2. The pupil should determine what facilities are available for him to carry on his work. This procedure is necessary because it is essential that the pupil take particular

pains to determine the facilities which will be available to him at the time needed. Frequently the home farm has the facilities, but they are not in every case available to the pupil when he most needs them, and his work suffers as a consequence.

It is seldom possible to arrange matters so that pupils shall have available the very best equipment that can be procured for the particular enterprise undertaken, but they should have access to such equipment as will allow them to proceed as nearly as possible in a modern way. It has been entirely too common a practice for pupils to study about and plan out their work in accordance with modern methods and then carry out their practice with methods which have no relation to those studied. The folly of such a procedure is so self-evident that it needs no discussion here. The pupil, therefore, must select such practice as can be carried on with the equipment he can secure. Under" facilities" there should also be considered the amount of financial aid the pupil can secure. If he is planning to start in the poultry business in a small way it will probably take less capital than if he is starting in the dairy business. Finances should play an important part in the selection of the work the pupil desires to undertake.

Farm occupation.-One of the main objectives of vocational agricultural instruction for the all-day pupil is that of preparing for farming. This objective implies that pupils should receive training in the particular occupation in farming which they desire to follow. It would seem, therefore, that very early in the pupil's career he should make a decision as to the line of farming that he expects to follow and select his supervised practice activities with this objective in mind. To illustrate: Suppose the pupil expects to become a cotton farmer. Then his major supervised practice activities should be in connection with those enterprises which are of major importance in cotton farming, as it will be natural to expect that this project work will annually be in connection with cotton production and marketing. The selection of his farming occupation may not be decided upon during the first year's work in vocational agriculture, in which case the above rule, of course, would not apply, but just as soon as the pupil can come to a decision his supervised practice activities should be governed accordingly.

It is quite natural to expect that the type of farming the pupil desires to undertake will be in connection with the type of farming that he enjoys most. In fact, likes and dislikes should play a large part in the selection of the supervised practice activities of the pupil. If the project is to be simply another year's work on the farm, with the boy doing the work in the same old routine way without the