Smith–Hughes Act

The Smith–Hughes National Vocational Education Act of 1917 was an act of the United States Congress that promoted vocational education in "agriculture, trades and industry, and homemaking," and provided federal funds for this purpose. As such, it is the basis both for the promotion of vocational education, and for its isolation from the rest of the curriculum in most school settings. The act was based largely on a report and recommendation from Charles Allen Prosser's Report of the National Commission on Aid to Vocational Education. Woodlawn High School (Woodlawn, Virginia) became the first public secondary school in the United States to offer agricultural education classes under the Smith–Hughes Act. Of all the vocational subjects mentioned, home economics is the only vocational subject that the act recognized for girls.