The Development of Vocational Agriculture before the Vocational Education Act 1963

Agricultural education programs are experiencing pressure to change from a variety of educational and societal influences. This pressure is not new to agricultural education programs. The evolution of vocational agriculture from 1945 to 1963 provides a historical example of vocational education change as a result of social influences. Rural America experienced unprecedented emigration after World War II. The loss of students from farming families, the intended recipients of vocational agriculture, should have hampered local programs, but in fact the opposite occurred: enrollment in vocational agriculture continued to grow. We examine how vocational agriculture teachers transformed local programs to match their emerging clientele before the Vocational Education Act of 1963.