A Review on Inclusion of Agriculture Subject in the High Schools of Bhutan: Perspective and Challenges

: Inclusion of Agriculture subject in the curriculum plays a very vital role in the country where the economic is fully dependent on agriculture. Agriculture education provides an alternative to career ladder for those students who are interested in taking farming in the future. In Bhutan inclusion of Agricultural subject became a part of school’s curriculum under the joint initiative of Agriculture and Education ministry from 2013 onwards. Agriculture inclusion in the curriculum of the school brings both the perspective and the challenges to the learners and also to the teachers. The main aim of introducing the curriculum is to make children learn through practical teaching and prepare them to value the dignity of work. But there are also many challenges faced by the student during the learning period that demotivates the children in opting agriculture as their vocational subject. This study aims to find out the challenges encountered by the students of IX-XII in taking up the optional Agricultural subject and also explore some of the benefit gained by the students in taking it to make it worthy in taking up their optional subjects.


INTRODUCTION
The inclusion of the agricultural science subject has been  instituting Agricultural subject in the school will promote dignity of labor among students and support them for their livelihood through work, produce and consume. It also discuss about the mechanized farming system that will ease the work and increase the production by many times. For that the syllabus are also attractive and motivational so that more children are enchanted towards agriculture subject. It includes not only vegetable production but also discuss about horticulture and dairy farming & poultry.
Higher School with the support from SAP, WASH, AgFS and other Agriculture Supporting agencies tries to produce vegetables and dairy products that can supplement the meals ensuring that student have balance diet meal. But for primary schools it is just to give them first-hand experience and teach them the value of organic food. There is also a presence of Thai Princes project of Thailand which supports few selected central school by providing technical support, supplying farming tools and also in providing scholarship and training for students and teachers in Thailand.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Waithera (2013), the study accords that Agriculture attracted few students compared to other studies with which it's paired within the curriculum. The foremost reasons for the selection of Agriculture were students' personal interests as indicated by 64% and performance within the subject as indicated by 24% of the scholars who took Agriculture. The study further found that 87% of the students' indicated that they'd consider taking Agriculture related careers. Concerning the institutional centered challenges, the study found that properties like school farm, Agricultural apparatuses and Agriculture classrooms were insufficient. Added to the challenges includes teacher workload and also the types of punishments offered to students like weeding flowers which hampered their attitude towards acquiring Agriculture subject as proven by 78% of the students respondents. The other challenge includes, the unreliable rainfall and high poverty stages that affected teaching and learning of Agriculture subject in schools as found in the study. Other factors included inadequate agricultural land, the actual incontrovertible fact that some students came from urban areas, and the environment which is arid and semi-arid area which hinders Agricultural practice. The study concluded that the    The study target to explore some of the basic need of the agriculture support school and to catered needs of the students to support the academic learnings.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The study was reviewed taken in consideration of the wellestablished agriculture school around the world and compared with the agriculture school of Bhutan. The study was targeted the higher schools where the agriculture subject is available as an optional subject. The Bhutan school and well established school around the globe was compared to find out some of the reasons why the performance of the agriculture schools of Bhutan is comparatively low. Some of the issue need to be addressed either by the school or by the Ministry of Education to have better performance on agriculture subjects.

Hand on experiences facilities
All the schools of Bhutan that are supported by the SAP program are access to school land that is being used to practice hand on experiences for the school children. Teacher who are responsible to look after the school agriculture program explore the feasibility of the agriculture land in the school premises or even explore from the private land in consultation with the school principal and community leaders. Curbelo (2006) in his study explained that many students in secondary schools were supportive and interested in taking up agricultural education program beside other subject. In support to his statement, there are many interested individuals in the schools who wants to carry out the classes which have the involvement of hands-on practical training, field trips and simulations work that will enable them to experience and get satisfaction on valuing the real life work.
"We can encourage and motivate many youth to go back to farms but if they are not equipped with the skills and the knowledge they will not be able to do anything."(Rinzin Dorji, Education Secretary, Kuensel…July 10, 2018). It means that practical based delivery of agricultural education program has the potential to provide hands-on work experiences, and develop life skills that will help students to decide their career paths in future too.

Farming skills
The children trained and provided potential learning on agriculture about the understanding of agriculture content knowledge, professional skills attainment, and life skill development that are necessary for healthy livings beyond other subject. The knowledge on the modern farming, the skills and new technology will be inherited from society and the lesson which will add on the beliefs on the technology that will support the agriculture to advancement. There are also many government agencies that support youth to provide skill training that focus more on improving the farming practice during the school break.
School with the support from agriculture support agencies send their student for internship training for awareness creation and skill on potential learning in agriculture. To making right choice in farming enterprises student need to have sufficient knowledge and skills that will make their living meaningful living. To break away the poverty cycle one need good potential over skills in agricultural and also in livestock farming. These are the skills that various curriculum in agriculture covered in the school during different period of time from IX-XII classes.

Develop good Community Relationship
There is a creation of good moral support from agriculture

Absence of Agriculture science laboratories
The absence of Agricultural science laboratories in any of the school is having negative impact on the progress in the teaching of agriculture subject. Only through the laboratories assessment the product can be changed with the introduction of the new varieties of system. Otherwise the output result remains the same how much the effort is being applied. Treatment for the diseases, chemical utilization, new varieties of crops and many more are tested in Agricultural science laboratory, Agricultural science workshop, school farm and library. So inadequate of Agricultural science laboratory and workshop will affect the production and interest of the children in learning.

Lack of farming machineries
The machinery resources are the only aids that will support in teaching and learning of agriculture in the schools besides manual practices seen around the society. It simplifies the work and boosts the energy in the children to work in schools' farms.  In elementary schools the volunteer teachers who don't have any training on agriculture subject take the agriculture assistance work which also greatly hampered the child's learning. Actually, the teachers who are supposed to take agriculture subject needed to be trained separately in any of the Teacher Training Institute and provided separate opportunities that will boost the teacher interest in the field of agriculture subject.

Wild life conflict with crops
Due to poor fencing facilities in the schools the gardens were never spared from these free roaming animals such as wild pigs, deer, monkeys and porcupines which are found abundant in different zone. Ministry of Agriculture came with different ideas to protect the crops and vegetables from wild animals but it's just wastage of government resources. Electric fencing was the only alternatives after barbed wire fencing to protect the garden but it is economically challenging for the schools to have electric fencing. It also proves to be very dangerous for the school to electric fence which will bring threat to the smaller children.

Cold climatic condition
Schools located at higher altitude have many problems comparing to that of low altitude. The production is always less due to cold climatic condition. Also in higher altitude only limited types of vegetables that are adaptable to cold are grown.
Even some of the school goes to extend by growing their vegetables in a poly house which require lots of man power and care. The production is very limited but need more effort which is yet problem for our children to use poly house garden.
Addition to this the low altitude experiences heavy rain during the summer for 5-6 months and don't allow working in the garden. But in high altitude only 4-5 months summer can be used to cultivate vegetables which is yet another challenging task for the agriculture children to complete their agriculture subject.

Inferiority discourse on Agriculture student
The influencing of student participation in the agriculture subject depend on how the school has aligned the task that will gear the teachers' interest- (Murphrey et al., 2016; Stoller & Knobloch,  2005). Support to the above statement made by different researcher, the agriculture subject in the school should me motivational and interesting so that more number of students will take the optional subject and teachers will take willingly. But owing to have larger groups in taking agriculture subject the practical scenario is just the opposite with only few children interested in the field of agriculture. And many belief that this curriculum is designed only to serve the purpose of the low achiever who can make a living with it. Because of this belief system agriculture student started developing low esteem and feel inferiority in the society thus resulting children to shift their interest towards other subject.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Agriculture is one of the supreme areas of study in which educational and vocational study of agriculture empowers a more profitable, and a more environmentally awareness for farmer and also students studying agriculture subject that will enables a more intelligent consumer of food. It is identified that agriculture wants interdisciplinary study meaning it comprises a knowledge of chemistry, sociology, biology, soil science, hydrology, meteorology, statistics and economics. Studying of agriculture exposes the essential struggle -and beauty -of applied knowledge. Agriculture is disordered and difficult to model. It is truly the interaction of societies with the physical atmosphere. Studying agriculture provides one an accepting of the actual world that no other discipline can deliver and also agriculture studies allows one to help others to feed themselves.
The teaching agriculture subject in Bhutan needed to be relooked in the curriculum and bring some reforms. With the existing practices the school will have only fewer groups of children taking agriculture classes in future. Shortage of essential human resources, physical facilities, machinery resources, textbooks and reference books are some of the learning materials that are needed to be managed by the agriculture support schools for the benefit and promotion of students' achievement in enhancing their learning interest. It also requires lot of practical settings with abundant resources available to conduct hand on experience on learning through experimenting. Otherwise the theoretical learning of agriculture subject will have no impact on the learning of the children learning and experiencing.
During the next development of curriculum, the developer should design the programs from the basic that incorporate agriculture in science curriculum which will be compulsory subject with methodical design that will motivate the learners to explore further and not to leave it as elective subject.
Curriculum developers also need to study the deficiencies and come out with the better solution that will be helpful for both to elementary and high education considering the future career for those interested children who will be opting to take Agriculture as their main source of livelihood.
Lastly, the modification of the attitude and skill achievement of the learners fully depends on how school will provide at the base for every subject. Individual interest on choosing of the subject should be respected and given the prior option with encouragement.