Why Rural Schools Matter
Mara Casey Tieken
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 10/2014
Pages: 246
Subject: Education, Social Science
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9.78E+12
eBook ISBN: 9781469618494
DESCRIPTION
From headlines to documentaries, urban schools are at the center of
current debates about education. From these accounts, one would
never know that 51 million Americans live in rural communities and
depend on their public schools to meet not only educational but
also social and economic needs. For many communities, these schools
are the ties that bind. Why Rural Schools Matter shares the
untold story of rural education. Drawing upon extensive research in
two southern towns, Mara Tieken exposes the complicated ways in
which schools shape the racial dynamics of their towns and sustain
the communities that surround them. The growing power of the state,
however, brings the threat of rural school closure, which
jeopardizes the education of children and the future of
communities. With a nuanced understanding of the complicated
relationship between communities and schools, Tieken warns us that
current education policies--which narrow schools' purpose to
academic achievement alone--endanger rural America and undermine
the potential of a school, whether rural or urban, to sustain a
community. Vividly demonstrating the effects of constricted
definitions of public education in an era of economic turmoil and
widening inequality, Tieken calls for a more contextual approach to
education policymaking, involving both state and community.
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