1. _Sewing Classes._ In co-operation with units from the
Girls' Patriotic League, International Institute, and
factories. A sewing unit often follows a cooking unit with
the same group.
2. _Sewing Demonstrations._ These are being given at some of
the home demonstrations, as the need arises.
3. _Millinery Classes._ In co-operation with the Girls'
Patriotic League, International Institute, and factories.
4. _Millinery Demonstrations_ are being held for mothers'
clubs connected with the church, and home demonstrations are
given when needed.
The Rolling Prairie community mentioned above, too, benefited from a
co-operative "County Project" work undertaken in 1913-14, under the
supervision of Purdue University. A course given during the year in
the rural schools was continued during the summer, open to all
children over ten and required of graduates from the eighth grade. The
County Superintendent of Schools, the County Agent under the
university (States Relations Service) and County Board of Trustees (La
Porte County) sent teachers into all parts of the county teaching the
boys farming, stock raising, and gardening, and the girls canning,
sewing, bread making, cooking vegetables, and laundry work, or if they
preferred, gardening. The teacher gave an hour and a half every ten
days at the home of each child.
At the end of the summer there were exhibits and prizes in the shape
of visits to the state fair, to the university, to Washington, or to
the stock show in Chicago. The Polish children who took prizes and who
went to the university (some of them had never been on a train) became
enthusiastic about going to high school and college, and some are
going to high school. The fact that they took prizes interested the
whole group, and the experiment affected the agricultural and domestic
practices of the community. The sad ending to the story is that the
township trustees have never been willing to assume again the expense
of the teachers' salaries, but the possibilities in the co-operative
method are evident.
The States Relations Service and the work of the Federal Board for
Vocational Education are based on the so-called principles of the
"grant in aid," which gives promise of both developing and encouraging
local initiative and of obtaining "national minima" of skill and
efficiency. Certainly the lack of any national body and often the lack
of any state machinery with power to encourage local action and with
facilities for gathering and comparing data, reduced the rate at which
progress is made. For example, the device of the home teacher planned
by the California Commission on Immigration and Housing, was only
slowly taken over by the education authorities of California.