Author : Manabat, Dulcisimo D.

Summary : The main concern of this study was to find out and identify some factors associated with parents' perception of and attitude toward agricultural education program as a course. The respondents' personal characteristics under study were age, educational attainment, occupation, farming experience, family size, and occupational aspiration. The socioeconomic characteristics were income, source of income, farm size, tenurial status, membership in organization, position held, length of membership, and frequency of attendance to meetings. These characteristics were correlated with their perception of and attitude toward agricultural education program, agricultural school, agriculture teacher, agricultural extension worker, communication media facilities, and employment opportunities of agriculture students. The Chi-square test, Cramer's V and Spearman correlation tests were used to find out whether certain relationships existed between the variables. Range, frequency count, percentage, mean, and standard deviation were also used to analyze the data. A total of 200 parents from 10 randomly selected villages in the municipality of Karomatan, Lanao del Norte, the Philippines were randomly selected as the respondents. Prepared questionnaires were used to collect data. Parents had a low perception of agricultural school, agriculture teacher, agricultural extension worker, and employment opportunities of agriculture graduates. Their income status was related to their perception of agriculture teacher and extension worker, while source of income and occupational aspiration "to work abroad" were related to their perception of communication media as channels of information about agricultural education. Aspiration "to manage a farm land" was related with their perception of agricultural education program. Farming and teaching/other occupations, higher income, source of income (farming and others) and tenurial status non-member of an organization were found related with attitude toward agricultural education program.