CURMUDGUCATION: A Book About Rural Ed: No Longer Forgotten

CURMUDGUCATION: A Book About Rural Ed: No Longer Forgotten

A Book About Rural Ed: No Longer Forgotten

Andy Smarick and Mike McShane, they of the AEI-Bellwether-Fordham axis of reformerdom, have put together a book about "the triumphs and struggles of rural education in America," and I grabbed a copy because rural education A) is hardly ever part of the Education Debates and B) is mostly where I've spent the last fifty or so years, both as student and teacher.

This collection of eight papers essays reads a little like the stack of end-of-semester research papers for Rural Ed 101, which is another way of saying that a certain amount of devotion to and interest in is required to read this puppy. Some portions are interesting, some worthwhile. I've read this so you can decide whether you want to. Let's break it down.

First, about that title.

No Longer Forgotten,either intentionally or un, is a title that captures one of the problems of rural education (actually, of rural pretty much everything). Don't see it? Well, think about who would have announced that North America was "no longer undiscovered." It would be the people who were already living there before 1492.

Nobody who lives in rural America ever forgot about it. The title announces, for better or worse, that this work is going to be centered on the non-rural folks; it will be about rural education seen from the outside.

As I said, this is not unusual. Rural spaces are almost always framed as outside. My own neck of the woods is frequently framed, by government bureaucrats, politicians, media, and even companies like supermarket chains, as outside Pittsburgh, as if we were an extension of that metro area. We are actually 90 to 120 minutes away from the CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: A Book About Rural Ed: No Longer Forgotten