Scott Simon, Host Weekend Edition Saturday

This week on our program, we'll run a story about a place that I've wanted to see for years. It's a productive working farm, where they grow basil, tomatoes, and corn, farm fish, raise pigs and goats, and bake bread and cookies, which they sell at a farm-stand. Of course, it's on the southwest side Chicago.

Chicago's Agricultural High School is an actual working Chicago public school. It was one of the first experiments Chicago's system attempted when it began trying to energize the public schools. The 600 students there comprise the largest chapter of FFA (what we used to call Future Farmers of America) in Illinois.

Some students are there to learn about horticulture or agriculture, because they figure they might like to be inspectors or agronomists. Others are attracted by the school's high academic standing and security (there are metal detectors at the doors; but they didn't seem to be in operation, which is the first time I have seen that in an urban high school in 20 years). And there are more than a few who might actually like to work on a farm. But they all learn, in a personal way, about the market system, as well as the technique and science of agriculture, and many of the students say that the lesson they get in entrepreneurship is hard to equal.

By the way: their sports teams are the Ag High Cyclones. The principal, William Hook, told us that it was held to be a more appealing mascot name than pigs, goats, or corn-stalks, although the school also has a living mascot: Lucy, an enormous pot-bellied pig who ranges freely over the grounds of the school.

Is there a particularly interesting vocational-type school in your neck of the woods you'd like to tell us about?

2:10 - October 22, 2008

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