Questioning Our Purpose

not an answering machine, I'm a questioning machine. If we have all the answers, how come we're in such as mess? - Douglas Cardinal, architect. It seems that over the past few years professional Agricultural Educators and other interested parties have undertaken several efforts to define our purpose - Who are we? Who do we serve? do we do? How do we do what we do? is our future? So, after years of investigation, input from literally hundreds of people and the expenditure of over a million dollars, why do we need to have an issue of The Agricultural Education Magazine with a theme that asks, What is the purpose of Agricultural Education? Don't we know by now that the purpose of Agricultural Education is literacy? What's the Difference? Let's get this straight from the start ...The agricultural focus and the focus are very different. With a vocational focus, the goals of the program are to prepare students for specific careers to The outcome is a graduate is ready to go to work or continue his/her education in a particular field in With an literacy focus, the educational goal is to expose the learner to the symbiotic relationship they have with The outcome is someone has knowledge and accurate perceptions about Put another way, a vocational approach to agriculture teaches students how to grow corn while a literacy approach to agriculture teaches students how corn is grown and how the growing of corn impacts them. How Did We Get Here? So, where did this literacy versus vocational training debate come from anyway? History tells us that when federal support for the teaching of agriculture in public schools was created with the Smith-Hughes Act, vocational preparation was the focus. The act stated that it was for people who have entered upon or are preparing to enter upon the work of the farm. Subsequent legislation expanded that vocational function to include off-farm jobs and directed the training to students with special needs. Strict adherence to the vocational agriculture model calls for students to identify a career path in agriculture and then select courses to prepare them for that career. Students conducted a Supervised Occupational Experience Program (SOEP) to provide more individualized, specific vocational training. I remember as a freshman in high school having to identify an career path in my FFA record book. I, like almost everyone in that class, selected agriculture. Dale, sat down the row from me wanted to know what to put if he wanted to be a race car driver. According to the model, my teacher should have counseled Dale to select a different career or a different class. During this same time period, the percentage of Americans engaged in production agriculture was shrinking. Today, estimates of the number of people involved in farming and ranching range from 1% - 2% of our population. While a much greater percentage of our workforce can be counted in careers related to agriculture, the relationship of those careers to the curriculum taught in high school agriculture classes is debatable. On the other hand, there is no arguing the fact that all of us interact with agriculture, no matter how narrowly or broadly you define it, on a daily basis. The abundant availability of products for a multitude of purposes is critical to our way of life today. A strong case can be made for people understanding basic concepts of agriculture on the basis of consumer awareness. Furthermore, considering the fact that in our system of governance citizens have the opportunity to impact policy, it is in the best interest of agriculturists that people are agriculturally literate. Even Dale, the future race car driver, should take literacy classes! …