Building partnerships for quality education in rural America

Rural American represents much of what is good and enduring in our society and contains many of those traditional American values that will keep our society strong in future years.

I would like to mention some of the contemporary characteristics of rural America and rural education, what the Education Department is doing to advance the cause of rural education, and how partnerships in education can help improve rural education.

In 1790 the first federal census found that 19 out of 20 Americans were rural dwellers, and it wasn't until 1920 that more Americans lived in urban areas than in rural ones.

It now appears that the century-long trend of population shift from rural to urban areas has been halted. In 1970 the rural population was 53.9 million (26.5 percent) and in 1980 the rural population had increased to 59.5 million (26.3 percent). And in 1983 only 5.8 million Americans (or 2.1 percent) lived on farms. What this means is that growth in rural America has been due largely to the non-farm population.

These facts have major implications for the development of education strategies in rural communities. A decline in the non-farm population means that rural America is experiencing greater diversity than ever before within its communities. Now more than ever there is a tremendous need to build effective partnerships to serve the members, both old and new, of the rural communities.

The following facts on rural schools are significant for the development of rural education policy:

* In 1981-82, 6,586 public school districts enrolled fewer than 600 pupils. These very small systems, most of which are located in rural areas, constitute 41.5 percent of all the school districts in the country, but they enrolled only 3.9 percent of the children in public schools.

* That symbol of rural America--the one-teacher school--is gradually being eliminated in this country. At the end of World War II (1945-1946) there were nearly 87,000 one-teacher schools in the U.S. Today, only about 800 of these one-teacher schools are in existence.

Pluses and minuses

The obvious advantages or strengths of rural schools are well known. I speak from experience, having gone to them in Lava Hot Springs, Idaho, in the days of my youth:

* The classes are small.

* Individual attention is the order of the day.

* The students have many opportunities for leadership positions and develop their individual talent.

* A higher participation is possible and expected in extracurricular activites.

There are also the equally well known disadvantages of small, rural schools:

* The faculty must teach many different subjects, some outside of their fields.

* The schools often lack expensive labs, libraries of specialized equipment.

* They are often rather isolated and lack the cultural assets found in urban areas (museums, libraries, theaters, concerts, etc.).

* They generally lack adequate financial resources.

It seems to me that rural schools are excellent places for new private sector partnerships, especially those that are concerned with utilizing the new educational technology--computers, video discs, TV video cassettes, and the like. Such partnerships are especially suited to compensate for rural isolation and lack of financial and cultural resources. It is not too farfetched to look forward to the day when the new technology has as significant an impact on rural education as radio and TV had on our parents' lifestyle. In fact, thanks to the generous and farsighted support of Bill Norris, Chairman of Control Data Corporation, a model rural community education partnership program has been established in Forest City, Iowa, designed to build computer literacy and computer-based education into the mainstream of Forest City community life.

Because I am a product of small rural towns and small rural colleges, I have a warm spot for the type of institutions that you represent, and for the almost sacred cause of rural education that you so effectively advocate.

Sociologists have observed that a state's character, culture, economy, values, beliefs, and social attitudes have been traditionally shaped by its small towns. I know that is true from my own experience of growing up in Lava Hot Srings, Idaho--population 467 (1980).

Rural areas have made obviously important contributions to the state and nation's economy by the produce of its soil and forests--its food and fiber. But it is often overlooked that the state and region's very character has been stamped by the small towns.

Influence and values

I agree completely with the observations of an Iowa, newspaper that: "The beliefs, values, and taboos cultivated there--around the family dinner table, or in a main street cafe, at a church circle meeting or in a high school class--have had a powerful influence on the political and social attitudes of the state's people."

Another way of expressing an insight into the lasting values of rural America and the need to preserve it was written by Oliver Goldsmith in his Deserted Village (1770):

"Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,

Where wealth accumulates, and men decay;

Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;

A breath can make them, as a breath has made;

But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,

When once destroyed, can never be supplied."

Because of my upbringing and my rural roots, I have long worried that my state and region's character, culture, economy, values, beliefs, and social attitudes have been placed in grave jeopardy by the massive shift in population over the last 50 years from rural to urban areas, with the following results: --decline of small farms; --decline of small communities; --decline of grade schools and high schools; and --rapid and increasing out-migration of our young people.

Naturally I was very pleased to read that preliminary data from the 1980 census indicates that this century-long trend is slowly reversing itself as American population shifts from: --frost belt to sun belt; --big cities to small towns; and --urban to rural areas.

I also know from my experience that as long as the local schools are alive and well, the local communities thrive, and vice versa. For in many of these rural areas the school is central to helping create the "sense of communit" that is so necessary. That is why I regard the improvement of rural education and rural family education an almost sacred cause.

Contributions of a special kind

The Department of Education recognizes the unique and valuable contributions rural America has made to both the social and economic development of our country.

Because the rural areas have not received the emphasis on education that they deserve, i.e., simple equity, the Department of Education has, as you know, adopted a policy on Rural Education and Rural Family Policy for the '80s, which states in part:

"Rural education shall receive an equitable share of the information, services, assistance and funds available from and through the Deparment of Education and its programs."

During the past year, the Department of Education has take many specific actions to carry out the various initiatives which constitute this policy. In the fall, the Rural Education Committee will submit a detailed report to me on the progress we have made in implementing our rural education policy during this fiscal year.

Business/school partnerships

Rural Americans have always been involved in many forum of school partnerships. Every time a school issues a yearbook and local businessmen and women pay a fee to have a small ad printed in the back of the book--that is a partnership. Those businesses know that in reality, the ads will probably not earn them much, if any, increase in profits. Essentially they are making a donation to the schools. Other examples of these partnerships include the car dealer who loans cars for the driver education class or the school parade; the business that contributes money to buy a new goalpost or uniforms for the band; and the people who contribute time and money to make costumes for the school play.

These types of partnerships are important and are evidence to me that people have always been and are still interested in schools. They want to help. It is your responsibility as educators to give them that opportunity. Just as you can get a community to support the student car wash that will help pay for new library books, you can also enlist the support of a corporation to contribute computer equipment to your school.

I am personally very encouraged and very enthusiastic about the prospects for rural education.

It has been my experience that our farmer-scientist-President-author-educator, Thomas Jefferson, in his famous Notes on Virginia was correct when he wrote:

"Those who labor in the earth are the chosen people of god, if he ever had a chosen people. . . ."

I envy those who are going to spend their lives working the land or engaged in business connected with agriculture, which allows them to live in rural America.

I would like to quote an observation on the joys and satisfactions of farming by the late Louis Bromfield, a writer and superb Ohio farmer, which I think is equally applicable to the joys of rural living:

"I know of no intellectual satisfaction greater than that of talking to a good intelligent farmer or livestock breeder who, instinctively perhaps, knows what many less fortunate men endeavor most of their lives in vain to learn from books, or the satisfaction of seeing a whole landscape, a whole small world, change from a half-desert into a rich ordered green valley inhabited by happy people, secure and prosperous, who each day create and add a little more to the world in which they live.

"Who each season see their valley grow richer and more beautiful, who are awake alike to the beauty of the deer coming down to the ponds in the evening and to the mystery and magnificence of a prize-winning potato or stalk of celery, who recognize alike the beauty of a field with a rich crop in which there are no 'poor spots,' and the beauty of a fine sow and her litter.

These are, it seems to me, among the people who belong, the fortunate ones who know and have always known whither they were bound. . ."

COPYRIGHT 1984 U.S. Government Printing Office
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