the pupil is discredited for not having made a success in a project when he has been dominated by his parents or has not been permitted to use his own judgment. These factors should be noted and taken into account when the teacher attempts to give the pupil a final rating on his work.

School records and reports.

Agricultural teachers must necessarily be held responsible for some form of permanent record to be kept at the local school or by the local school officers. In a large measure approval of the agricultural teacher's work is necessarily based upon his evidence, and he should therefore have filed in permanent form complete record> of each individual pupil with regard to his supervised practice. These records should become a part of the permanent records of the school and should be always accessible. They should include a review of the pupil's instruction, the pupil's project work year by year, and grades on the same, giving such detailed information as will have value for future reference. Such records are valuable after the pupil leaves school in following up the work of the pupil when he becomes an actual farmer.

The data secured from reports of agricultural teachers furnish the State board and legislators with a basis upon which to determine the amount of appropriations needed and the desirability of continuing the program of vocational education in agriculture, both in the State and in the locality. Tedious as the work of reporting may seem sometimes to the agricultural teacher, he can not be excused from his responsibility of keeping his superiors truthfully informed as to progress made and results obtained. No attempt is made in this bulletin to standardize the type of report that the agricultural teacher should make to the State office. Each State board for vocational education determines this for the the given State. However, in any case this report should include the following items: Name of pupil, his location, his age, his class instruction, type of his supervised practice, giving the size, scope, yields, costs, financial returns, hours devoted by the pupil to supervised practice, and grades given by the agricultural teachers.

Use of the pupil's record in teaching.

Next to the records obtained by the experiment stations in the respective States and the Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C., the records of the vocational agricultural pupil, supervised by the agricultural teacher, are probably the most accurate records obtainable on farm enterprises in the United States. At the present time agricultural teachers are making very little use of the records of their pupils in their teaching. If an agricultural teacher feels that he can not use the records of his pupils, he is simply convicting

himself of his inefficiency as a supervisor of the practice work. If the records of agricultural pupils are reasonably accurate, the agricultural teacher should find them useful in connection with farmmanagement studies, as contributing to the solution of farm-enterprise problems. Records obtained by any one pupil are not as valuable, considered separately, as is a summary of the records obtained by two or more pupils in the same enterprises. An agricultural teacher should make a summarized analysis of the result of the supervised practice, in order that information may be available for use in the future by himself and by his pupils. Following are a few items that may be included in such an analysis:

1. Classification of the supervised practice and enrollment in each class.

2. Determination of high, low, average, median, and total scope for each class of enterprise.

3. Mortality for each class of enterprise.

4. Gross returns, net returns, cost per unit, and returns per unit for each class of enterprise.

5. Comparison of No. 4 with local averages.

6. Yields per unit in each class of enterprise and comparison of pupil's yields with local yields.

7. Study of yields and returns per unit as based upon the

scope.

8. Hours of man-labor per unit for each enterprise.

9. Relation of the supervised practice undertaken to enterprises of the community.

10. Labor costs per $100 of receipts in each enterprise.

11. Pupil-labor returns per hour for each enterprise.

12. Interest on investment for each enterprise.

13. Rating jobs in each enterprise in accordance with number of hours of labor.

14. Rating expenses in each enterprise.

15. Percentage of total labor employed for each job.

16. Charting the labor by months in each enterprise from the pupil's reports.

17. Percentage represented by labor cost in the total cost of the enterprise.

18. Checking each pupil on each of the above items.

19. Cost of use of equipment per unit.

20. Amount of products produced in lots sufficiently large to allow for cooperative marketing.

School contests and supervised practice.

Every agricultural teacher should feel that one of his responsibilities is to stimulate as far as possible interest in outside activities. The average farm boy, reared in the country, looks upon farm work

as a drudgery and as something to be avoided if possible. His desire has been to get out of farm work rather than to get into it. Many conditions might be noted in accounting for such an attitude, chief among which is perhaps the very common lack of ownership or of financial participation in the enterprises which he undertakes. Financial returns usually increase interest in ownership, and the thrill of winning in competition is a further stimulus to this interest. Numerous means can be employed in this latter phase of the work-such as exhibits at local fairs, judging contests, and grading the work. The local school contest is probably the most universal means accepted by agricultural teachers for stimulating interest through competition. Such contests usually include exhibits of products, judging products, and skill in the manipulation of certain phases of the enterprise-or all of these combined. Nearly as much interest can be aroused in a plowing contest as in a baseball game, if the contest is properly conducted. Every agricultural teacher should, therefore, realize his responsibility for maintaining the interest of the agricultural pupil, and should attempt to provide an annual contest of some kind. He may stimulate the activities of his pupils further by arranging for contests with other near-by vocational agricultural departments.

RESPONSIBILITY OF THE STATE OFFICE

In the delegation of responsibility for supervised practice the State office of administration must accept its share. The character of its responsibility is quite different from that of either the teacher or the pupil. The State office must be held responsible for the State program in supervised practice, for the teacher-training program, for a uniform method of keeping records, both by the teachers and in the State office, for the making of studies, for the granting of school credit, and for approval of the supervisory program of the individual teachers.

A State program of supervised practice.

It is not difficult for a State department to formulate a State program of supervised practice, though few States seem to have done this. By a State program is meant a plan by which that section of the act which requires at least six months of directed or supervised practice in agriculture is carried out. In many States this has been left somewhat to the teacher, and in others the supervised practice has simply meant a project.

We are coming to feel that we need a systematic program for supervised practice in our agricultural schools also, in addition to reasons noted elsewhere, as a basis for the work of the State super

visor. Each item of the program suggested below has been incorporated in the programs of several States:

1. The project to be taken in relation to instruction.

2. The supplementary farm practice to include minor projects or a series of farm jobs in relation to instruction, or both. 3. The improvement work to be developed out of previous years' supervised practice.

4. The farm mechanics or shop jobs to be definitely related to the shop instruction at the school.

5. School plots to be provided.

6. Group or class projects to include class enterprises, cooperative marketing of pupils' products, contract jobs, and community service work by class farm labor.

The above program for supervised practice does not contemplate that each individual shall undertake all of the activities indicated by the program, but proposes rather that every pupil entitled to enrollment in a vocational agricultural class shall do his supervised practice in a creditable way. Each type of activity noted above is discussed more fully in the following paragraphs.

Projects.-Projects have been defined and discussed in Part II, pages 9-11, and explain in detail the part the project should play in the State program for supervised farm practice. However, some projects, as conducted, do not cover all phases of production and therefore are but modifications of ideal projects. We have also socalled projects which do not return a marketable product. Such modifications are exceptions rather than the rule and can be justified only in cases of boys with real vocational interests who have limited facilities with which to work.

Supplementary farm practice.-The terra "supplementary farm practice" is used in connection with all other forms of supervised practice activities other than those conducted as projects. Over 90 per cent of the supervised practice of the vocational pupils in the United States has been conducted under the name of a project, and projects are therefore rated as a major supervised practice activity of the vocational pupil.

By supplementary farm practice is meant any series of farm jobs or minor projects which may be considered as related to the general subject matter of the instruction. Such practice is included here to give pupils greater opportunity to secure experience in the major farm activities or to provide job experiences related to the general subject matter. It is not difficult to realize that a pupil who confines his supervised practice entirely to a corn project will have very

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little experience or personal contact with problems in connection with phases of crop production other than corn growing.

This section of the program for supervised practice contemplates a systematic checking of farm skills and jobs relative to the course and incident to the farm from which the pupil comes. Where skills alone are concerned, the pupil may be expected to perform, under the supervision either of the teacher or of the parent, those tasks in which he is not proficient. Where the job requires judgment and some planning in addition to the skill involved, it is more essential that it be closely supervised by the teacher.

Both of the above types of jobs should be considered under this section of the program only when they are not a part of the regular project work. It is very improbable that the average pupil will have time to conduct, as a part of his supervised practice, all of the jobs on the farm related to his course of study. Therefore the jobs selected as supplementary supervised practice should be those in which there is a very small degree of transfer from the jobs connected with his projects.

One State requires by law every pupil enrolled in vocational agricultural work to do a minimum number of hours of communityservice work. Such community-service work becomes a form of supervised practice, as the pupils actually accompany the teacher and perform the service that the individual farmer has requested of the teacher. The above plan is an excellent means of giving the pupil supplementary work in farm jobs. It has the further value of bringing the school closer to the farms in the community and to the problems that need to be presented to the class. Naturally the pupil takes great interest in 'demonstrating to farmers of the community his skill and his knowledge of the job in which service is requested. This method is also followed sporadically throughout the United States by some of the better agricultural teachers and should be 'looked upon by the State supervisors as a definite part of the program for supervised practice.

Improvement work. Improvement projects should be developed from the previous year's supervised practice by second or third year pupils. A project in corn may have taught the pupil many things in connection with corn growing. His improvement, however, should not stop at this point. Rather he should be given the opportunity to improve by skillful manipulation and more intensive instruction in certain phases of corn growing, such as improvement of the variety through ear-to-row tests and careful breeding. Such improvement work might be continued throughout the entire period of the pupil's vocational school work and even after the pupil leaves school.