Vocational Department

LHS 1922-23

Proof of the practicalness of the Domestic Science Department has been shown by the cooking class, which ably prepared and served the Itaretil banquet, also delicious refreshments at a recent Parent-Teachers' Meeting. The exhibits of the sewing class at the same meeting received much praise.

With the beginning of the past school year a radical change was made in the agricultural instruction by placing it on the vocational basis. The fundamental object of vocational agriculture is to teach boys how to farm, and therefore current farm operation is the basis of study rather than the text book. The class has 23 members and by alternating courses a boy may take two subjects in vocational agriculture each of his four years in High School.

Two of the members of the agriculture class, viz, Walter Childress, '25, and Archie Childress, '23, who were former Calf Club members, took part in a clean milk demonstration which was put on at the Lake County Fair, Crown Point; the Indiana State Fair, Indianapolis, and the National Dairy Exposition in St. Paul, Minn.

The entire class often attends agricultural events such as the Lake County Fair and Farmers Short Course at Crown Point. Four boys with their teacher attended the International Live Stock Exposition for two days and received much inspiration from the trip.

The two courses given this year are Agricultural Botany and Dairying and the boys devote the entire afternoon of each day to this work. Among the various activities of the class are the leasing of a school orchard of sixty trees for instructional purposes. Last fall the class constructed a 16x24 poultry house where six of the boys are caring for 100 hens and using this for their project work.

Home project work is a strong feature of vocational agriculture, whereby each boy selects some enterprise on his home farm to care for and keep records upon. Seventeen members of the class are keeping complete milk and feed records on their home herd and make weekly and monthly reports. One member is planning to raise ten acres of corn, as his home project work. All of this home work is under the direct supervision of the instructor.

A Holstein calf club, a pig club, and a potato club with a total of 40 to 50 members has been organized and also includes many boys from the rural grade schools. The instructor will spend the summer in Lowell in order to supervise club and home project work.

The class set out a small orchard in the rear of the building and has carried out a plan of improving the school grounds by landscape gardening.

The class organized an agricultural club and held bi-monthly meetings for the purpose of widening their scope of thought and increasing the interest. A large seed corn germinator has been constructed and the class is doing much seed corn testing for the farmers of the community.

Class recitations, farm visits, laboratory work, stock judging, home project, club work, and occasional addresses by men from outside, are all made a part of the instruction in vocational agriculture.