{"id":1294,"date":"2009-12-07T15:03:28","date_gmt":"2009-12-07T21:03:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/crawler\/?p=1294"},"modified":"2009-12-07T15:03:28","modified_gmt":"2009-12-07T21:03:28","slug":"rural-schools-overlooking-the-future-of-their-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2009\/12\/07\/rural-schools-overlooking-the-future-of-their-communities\/","title":{"rendered":"rural schools overlooking the future of their communities?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Des Moines Register<\/a> recently discussed rural\u00a0Iowans’ efforts to combat the problem of population loss as their young adults relocate to bigger cities, as well as the difficulties faced by those who stay close to home:<\/p>\n

Iowans have made countless efforts to stop the state’s rural population drain. Former Gov. Tom Vilsack recruited former Iowans and welcomed immigrants. Groups worked to gussy up Main Street for a kind of nostalgic small-town tourism. Conference attendees listened to speakers who touted attracting a young, creative class of artists and entrepreneurs. Experts waited for the telecommuters who never came. Economic development officials hustled for small manufacturing plants that sometimes didn’t pay much.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article includes sociological commentary on the fates of the “stayers”:<\/p>\n

They are ignored, maybe even pitied when you see them in the grocery, and yet they are the very future of the town, say Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas, a husband-wife sociologist team who moved from Philadelphia to Iowa for several months to write “Hollowing Out the Middle: The Rural Brain Drain and What It Means for America.”<\/p>\n

They identified a group of citizens they labeled “the stayers” who were not often encouraged by teachers or parents to attend college, worked through school to buy a pickup truck, and became invisible to the town’s more moneyed and educated classes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“They are taken for granted, as in the story of the prodigal son,” said Kefalas, a St. Joseph’s University sociology professor who interviewed nearly 300 young people in a northeast Iowa town they chose to keep anonymous. “They don’t work as hard investing in them and just assume the old way of life will somehow work out for them.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Part of the problem is that secondary education in America is focused on\u00a0preparing kids\u00a0to go to\u00a0college:<\/p>\n

“Those that have the ability go off. That makes a lot of sense as a community or a school. You don’t want to hold them back,” said high school counselor Diane Stegge. “But at the same time, you are taking them away from the community.”<\/p>\n

Kefalas said schools should do more to prepare students who have a desire to stay or don’t have the money or abilities for college. Many are too busy catering to the high achievers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Teachers in Ellis (the pseudonym for the town in the book) were offended by our portrayal. But I’m a teacher, and it’s much more fun to teach those above grade level,” she said. “The challenge is how you make your school work for everyone.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One rural Iowa school board member sums up the consequences for small towns of ignoring their average students:<\/p>\n

“The ones with higher education, we know there is going to be nothing here for them,” he said. “We also try to focus on those with special needs. But the middle-of-the-road ones are going to become our community.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Des Moines Register recently discussed rural\u00a0Iowans’ efforts to combat the problem of population loss as their young adults relocate to bigger cities, as well as the difficulties faced by those who stay close to home: Iowans have made countless efforts to stop the state’s rural population drain. Former Gov. Tom Vilsack recruited former Iowans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":336,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39074],"tags":[96,131,34,122,1828,1221,100],"class_list":["post-1294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sightings","tag-development","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-lifecourse","tag-population","tag-rural","tag-youth"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/336"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1294"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1296,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1294\/revisions\/1296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}