Search results

The purpose of this study was to assess the leadership practices or behaviors of FFA members participating in a leadership development workshop known as the Success Conference in Georgia. Leadership practices were determined using the Student Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) (Kouzes & Posner, 1998). While success conference participants scored the highest on encouraging the heart (M = 23.77; SD = 4.18) and enabling others to act (M = 23.75; SD = 4.40), placing Georgia FFA members participating in the Success Conference at approximately the 45^th and 35^th percentile respectively for all Student LPI scores, this was slightly below Kouzes’ and Posner’s (1998) normative data for high school students. It is recommended that future leadership development opportunities focus on activities that foster collaboration, strengthen others, recognize the contributions of others, and celebrate team accomplishments.

The primary purpose of this correlational study was to explain the relationship between discipline specific critical thinking skills and leadership training and experiences of selected FFA youth leaders. Researcher-developed measures of critical thinking skills and leadership were used to discover low, but positive relationships between critical thinking skills and each leadership variable of leadership training, leadership experience, and total leadership score. The relationship between leadership training and Evaluation and Total Critical Thinking Skill was significant. Similarly, the relationship between leadership experiences and Analysis and Total Critical Thinking Skill was significant. Finally, the relationship between combined leadership score and Analysis, Evaluation, and Total Critical Thinking Skill was also significant. Recommendations include more student exposure to formal teaching and training in leadership, more research to substantiate the connection between leadership and critical thinking, and more encouragement for students to be more active in non-formal activities.

With the beginning of the twentieth century, preventive medicine is entering upon a new era. We are now confronted by a set of problems which are different in many respects from the problems so successfully attacked by the great masters of preventive medicine of the last century, and which call for the application of different preventive measures. The objects which Edwin Chadwick, John Simon, and our other great forerunners of the last century, sought to attain, and which to a large extent they did attain, may, I think, not unfairly be described by the phrase “ civic cleanliness.” They sought to provide pure water supplies ; to remove refuse and filth from the vicinity of human beings by establishing improved systems of drainage and sewerage, and better methods of dust collection ; to provide open spaces and wider streets; to pave streets, yards, etc.; to raise the sanitary standard of building construction; to provide proper burial grounds ; to regulate offensive trades ; and to abate the smoke nuisance and the pollution of rivers. Of course we all know that they did very much more than this. Their work was too great and its effect too far‐reaching to be described by any single phrase. Still, I think it not unfair to say that, broadly speaking, we may regard the attainment of civic cleanliness as the great object of cur public health administration in the nineteenth century. It cannot be said that this object has been wholly attained. In a country whose capital is still supplied with something like filtered sewage as drinking water, it is obvious that there is much yet to be done to secure civic cleanliness. But the point is that any further progress in this direction must, or should, take place on the lines already laid down by our predecessors. Their methods of civic sanitation have stood the test of experience, and all that is wanted is a further development on existing lines. It is otherwise with the new problems that now press for solution. These are problems of a different nature, and demand new methods of treatment, although the principles underlying the methods will be found, probably, to be the same. Preventive medicine in the nineteenth century was chiefly occupied with problems of civic cleanliness ; in the twentieth century we are confronted with the problems of personal hygiene, and the three problems of this kind which appear to me to call most urgently for solution at the present time are: (1) The problem of infantile mortality; (2) The problem of school hygiene; (3) The problem of the milk supply.

The decision of the Wolverhampton Stipendiary in the case of “Skim‐milk Cheese” is, at any rate, clearly put. It is a trial case, and, like most trial cases, the reasons for the judgment have to be based upon first principles of common‐sense, occasionally aided, but more often complicated, by already existing laws, which apply more or less to the case under discussion. The weak point in this particular case is the law which has just come into force, in which cheese is defined as the substance “usually known as cheese” by the public and any others interested in cheese. This reliance upon the popular fancy reads almost like our Government's war policy and “the man in the street,” and is a shining example of a trustful belief in the average common‐sense. Unfortunately, the general public have no direct voice in a police court, and so the “usually known as cheese” phrase is translated according to the fancy and taste of the officials and defending solicitors who may happen to be concerned with any particular case. Not having the general public to consult, the officials in this case had a war of dictionaries which would have gladdened the heart of Dr. JOHNSON; and the outcome of much travail was the following definition: cheese is “ coagulated milk or curd pressed into a solid mass.” So far so good, but immediately a second definition question cropped up—namely, What is “milk?”—and it is at this point that the mistake occurred. There is no legal definition of new milk, but it has been decided, and is accepted without dispute, that the single word “milk” means an article of well‐recognised general properties, and which has a lower limit of composition below which it ceases to be correctly described by the one word “milk,” and has to be called “skim‐milk,” “separated milk,” “ milk and water,” or other distinguishing names. The lower limits of fat and solids‐not‐fat are recognised universally by reputable public analysts, but there has been no upper limit of fat fixed. Therefore, by the very definition quoted by the stipendiary, an article made from “skim‐milk” is not cheese, for “skim‐milk” is not “milk.” The argument that Stilton cheese is not cheese because there is too much fat would not hold, for there is no legal upper limit for fat; but if it did hold, it does not matter, for it can be, and is, sold as “Stilton” cheese, without any hardship to anyone. The last suggestion made by the stipendiary would, if carried out, afford some protection to the general public against their being cheated when they buy cheese. This suggestion is that the Board of Agriculture, who by the Act of 1899 have the legal power, should determine a lower limit of fat which can be present in cheese made from milk; but, as we have repeatedly pointed out, it is by the adoption of the Control system that such questions can alone be settled to the advantage of the producer of genuine articles and to that of the public.

The latest information from the magazine chemist is extremely valuable. He has dealt with milk‐adulteration and how it is done. His advice, if followed, might, however, speedily bring the manipulating dealer before a magistrate, since the learned writer's recipe is to take a milk having a specific gravity of 1030, and skim it until the gravity is raised to 1036; then add 20 per cent. of water, so that the gravity may be reduced to 1030, and the thing is done. The advice to serve as “fresh from the cow,” preferably in a well‐battered milk‐measure, might perhaps have been added to this analytical gem.

In Table IV. are given the averages of the three samples of each cow's milk given morning and evening. The average fat for the three samples of the milk of cow A is 3.92; cow B, 3.26; and cow C, 3.24, and if these were all mixed together the average fat would be 3.45 for the morning milk. The average fat of the three samples taken from the cows A, B, and C in the afternoon is—A, 5.08; B, 3.08; and C, 3.54; and the average of the three milks is 3.85. In the same table are shown the first two samples of each cow's milk mixed together both morning and evening. By referring to Tables II. and III. under cow A it will be seen that the milk fat of the first and second samples is 2.30 and 3.67, and these added together are shown on Table IV. under cow A, and similarly with cow B and cow C night and morning. It will also be seen that the milk fat in the morning milk of cow A is 3.21; cow B, 2.49; and cow C, 2.15, and if these were mixed together the average fat would be 2.61. The average fat of two samples of milk taken from cow A in the afternoon is 4.50; cow B, 2.67; cow C, 2.12, and if mixed together the average fat is 3.08. It is interesting to note that if cow B was milked for six minutes in the morning, and the milk sold, the sample would be .51 deficient in fat, and the dairyman could honestly say that the milk was sold as it came from the cow. There is also a deficiency in the fat of the milk of cow C in the morning, and cows B and C in the afternoon.

A pæan of joy and triumph which speaks for itself, and which is a very true indication of how the question of poisonous adulteration is viewed by certain sections of “the trade,” and by certain of the smaller and irresponsible trade organs, has appeared in print. It would seem that the thanks of “the trade” are due to the defendants in the case heard at the Liverpool Police Court for having obtained an official acknowledgment that the use of salicylic acid and of other preservatives, even in large amounts, in wines and suchlike articles, is not only allowable, but is really necessary for the proper keeping of the product. It must have been a charming change in the general proceedings at the Liverpool Court to listen to a “preservatives” case conducted before a magistrate who evidently realises that manufacturers, in these days, in order to make a “decent” profit, have to use the cheapest materials they can buy, and cannot afford to pick and choose; and that they have therefore “been compelled” to put preservatives into their articles so as to prevent their going bad. He was evidently not to be misled by the usual statement that such substances should not be used because they are injurious to health— as though that could be thought to have anything to do with the much more important fact that the public “really want” to have an article supplied to them which is cheap, and yet keeps well. Besides, many doctors and professors were brought forward to prove that they had never known a case of fatal poisoning due to the use of salicylic acid as a preservative. Unfortunately, it is only the big firms that can manage to bring forward such admirable and learned witnesses, and the smaller firms have to suffer persecution by faddists and others who attempt to obtain the public notice by pretending to be solicitous about the public health. Altogether the prosecution did not have a pleasant time, for the magistrate showed his appreciation of the evidence of one of the witnesses by humorously rallying him about his experiments with kittens, as though any‐one could presume to judge from experiments on brute beasts what would be the effect on human beings—the “lords of creation.” Everyone reading the evidence will be struck by the fact that the defendant stated that he had once tried to brew without preservatives, but with the only result that the entire lot “went bad.” All manufacturers of his own type will sympathise with him, since, of course, there is no practicable way of getting over this trouble except by the use of preservatives; although the above‐mentioned faddists are so unkind as to state that if everything is clean the article will keep. But this must surely be sheer theory, for it cannot be supposed that there can be any manufacturer of this class of article who would be foolish enough to think he could run his business at a profit, and yet go to all the expense of having the returned empties washed out before refilling, and of paying the heavy price asked for the best crude materials, when he has to compete with rival firms, who can use practically anything, and yet turn out an article equal in every way from a selling point of view, and one that will keep sufficiently, by the simple (and cheap) expedient of throwing theory on one side, and by pinning their faith to a preservative which has now received the approval of a magistrate. Manufacturers who use preservatives, whether they are makers of wines or are dairymen, and all similar tradesmen, should join together to protect their interests, for, as they must all admit, “the welfare of the trade” is the chief thing they have to consider, and any other interest must come second, if it is to come in at all. Now is the time for action, for the Commission appointed to inquire into the use of preservatives in foods has not yet given its decision, and there is still time for a properly‐conducted campaign, backed up by those “influential members of the trade” of whom we hear so much, and aided by such far‐reaching and brilliant magisterial decisions, to force these opinions prominently forward, in spite of the prejudice of the public; and to insure to the trades interested the unfettered use of preservatives,—which save “the trade” hundreds of thousands of pounds every year, by enabling the manufacturers to dispense with heavily‐priced apparatus, with extra workmen and with the use of expensive materials,—and which are urgently asked for by the public,—since we all prefer to have our foods drugged than to have them pure.

IN order to be able to discriminate with certainty between butter and such margarine as is sold in England, it is necessary to carry out two or three elaborate and delicate chemical processes. But there has always been a craving by the public for some simple method of determining the genuineness of butter by means of which the necessary trouble could be dispensed with. It has been suggested that such easy detection would be possible if all margarine bought and sold in England were to be manufactured with some distinctive colouring added—light‐blue, for instance—or were to contain a small amount of phenolphthalein, so that the addition of a drop of a solution of caustic potash to a suspected sample would cause it to become pink if it were margarine, while nothing would occur if it were genuine butter. These methods, which have been put forward seriously, will be found on consideration to be unnecessary, and, indeed, absurd.

MR. ALLAN BARNS‐GRAHAM, of Craigallian, Milngavie, has sent us a copy of a letter, addressed by him to the Secretary of the Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society and printed in pamphlet form, which contains a number of points of considerable importance. MR. BARNS‐GRAHAM observes that Bran and “Thirds” play a most important part in the rearing and feeding of cattle, pigs, and poultry, and in the production of milk; that these two products ought to be used to a much greater extent than they are now; that large quantities are annually exported from this country; and that the supplies ought to be jealously guarded. He expresses the hope that the Agricultural Organisation Societies of Great Britain and Ireland will in no way encourage the manufacture of condensed milk—on the ground that it is not in the interest of the public health, nor in the interest of agriculture to encourage the manufacture of any article of food which can be made to keep indefinitely by artificial means. This appears to us to be a somewhat strange position to take up, unless the author's intention is to condemn the practice of keeping food products by means of chemical preservatives—in which case we agree with him. But the proper preservation of many food products by legitimate and harmless methods, not involving the use of chemicals or of other objectionable devices, is surely permissible and valuable to the community. Properly prepared and sterilised condensed milk is a very useful commodity if it is what it purports to be. In this connection we may say, however, that condensed milk containing large quantities of added sugar ought not to be sold as “condensed milk,” but as “condensed sweetened milk,” or “condensed milk and sugar”—the proportion of added sugar being prominently disclosed; while, in our view, the sale of “condensed sweetened; ‘separated,’ or ‘machine‐skimmed’ milk” ought to be prohibited altogether.

As a result of the changes caused by the preparation of foods gradually passing out of the home into the hands of manufacturers, there has arisen an absolute need for a complete supervision of the public food supplies. A supervision which shall place some limit upon the substitution of cheaper and inferior methods and dangerous materials in place of the standard formerly used in our homes.