By
Dr. Rosco Vaughn, Executive Director of the National Council for Agricultural
Education
After
81 years of providing instruction and preparing individuals for successful
careers in agriculture, can we say the job is done? Today, some individuals
believe that little need exists for continued instruction
in agriculture.They believe that teaching
science and business skills will meet the food, fiber, and environmental challenges
facing the world. In some respects, these individuals are correct. In the
years ahead, agricultural education will become more focused on the science
of producing and processing plants and animals as well as maintaining a healthy environment. The business skills needed
by successful producers and agribusiness companies will continue to become
more complex and challenging. If agricultural education does not change to
meet the needs of a rapidly changing world we canexpect to see little demand for this subject in the schools of tomorrow.
Many of us in the profession understand that the real value of agricultural
education is not necessarily the subject
Reinventing Agricultural Education for the Year
2020
For the past three years,
The National Council for Agricultural Education has conducted a major initiative
to prepare agricultural education for the new millennium. The Council used
Reinventing Agricultural Education for the Year 2020 (RAE 2020), a project
funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, to help agricultural education create
its preferred future, rather than react and respond to change only after it
happens. While we cannot anticipate all the changes that will occur during
the next 21 years, we can certainly decide what we would like for our programs
and students to accomplish. For example, we know that we want our young people
to have successful careers after they complete our programs. If we want our
students and teachers to be successful, we must do our very best to understand
their current needs and anticipate their needs in the future. RAE 2020 has
provided grassroots input into a preferred future for agricultural education.
Not one participant in this initiative has said that we should abandon agricultural
education?many have said that the program must change but none have advocated
that it be discontinued.
High Quality Teachers Are the Key to a Successful
Future
There are several ways to
ensuring a successful future for agricultural education. First, we must attract
and keep high quality teachers. Bright young people entering agricultural
education will ensure it sustains itself in future years. Teachers need the
support of strong state and national leaders to help them keep abreast of
changes in teaching technology and methodology along with technical knowledge
in agriculture.
Another key to future success
will be agricultural education's ability to deliver instruction to diverse
audiences in diverse settings. Our programs must become global in scope and
available to students of varied age levels and backgrounds. Distance delivery
of instruction will become commonplace. Agricultural literacy will become
a more important focus for agricultural educators, and we will need to determine
the primary customer for our literacy efforts. For example, we should consider
targeting middle school and junior high students as the primary audience for
our agricultural literacy efforts. By providing high quality instructional
materials and programs for students in a grades 6 through 8, agricultural
educators can focus their efforts on a specific target population. Some of
these students will be taught by teachers trained to teach agriculture while
other students will receive instruction from teachers with little formal training
in agricultural education. To ensure successful integrated instruction occurs,
high quality materials must be developed that can be used by teachers of all
subject areas for presenting information about agriculture to their students.
Students can take advantage of opportunities for leadership and personal growth
under a system where schools pay a membership fee that allows all students
in these grades to participate in leadership and personal development activities
- perhaps a "Junior FFA" that doesn't require individual membership fees.
Students interested in pursuing careers could then enter career preparation
programs and join FFA as they advance in school. Agricultural education must
be responsive to the needs of an increasingly diverse customer base. A cadre
of high quality teachers with diverse backgrounds is essential for agricultural
education to successfully meet the divergent challenges of the future.
Community Based Programs with Global Outreach
To ensure we meet the needs
of the agricultural industry and a more diverse customer population, teachers
must think globally but be empowered locally. To best meet the needs of students,
our programs must become more "community-based." Teachers can empower themselves
locally by bringing a wide range of community stakeholders together to determine
the type of agricultural education program the community needs and wants for
their students. Together the community and teacher decide what should be taught.
This ensures community and school support for the agricultural education program
and allows the teacher to focus on how to teach using materials such as the
Local Program Success Guide and the Agriculture Teacher's Manual. Students
interested in pursuing agricultural careers must have access to instruction
and materials about the global agricultural industry that continues to evolve.
Teachers must stay abreast of agriculture worldwide and show how world issues
relate to the student's home community, state, and country.
Managing Change
Successfully
Finally, we must look for
new ideas and new ways of delivering our materials and programs. The rapid
advances in knowledge and technology dictate that we must prepare students
to deal with change. Change occurs at an accelerating pace and our students
find it increasingly challenging to stay abreast of current information and
technology. We must develop processes to help them deal with these challenges
and help them feel comfortable working in a rapidly changing environment.
Competition and cooperation will both be very important in the future and
students will need to know when to focus their energies in collaboration with
others and when to rely on their competitive edge to take advantage of their
opportunities.
A New Vision for Agricultural Education
The national vision statement
developed through RAE 2020 envisions that all people will value and understand
the vital role of agriculture and natural resources in advancing personal
and global well-being. For this vision to become reality, we must reexamine
and refocus our efforts related to career preparation and agricultural literacy.
Opportunities abound in the years ahead and if we recruit bright young people
into the profession and provide a support system to help them become successful
educators then agricultural education will become more important than ever
during the next millennium.