The Educational Missions in the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1936) had the purpose of making available, "especially to those living in rural areas, the feeling of progress and the means to participate in it, as well as in its moral stimuli and in the examples of universal progress, so that all the peoples of Spain, even those in remote areas…

How do people use education to respond to change? How do people learn what is expected of "good citizens" in their communities? These questions have long concerned educational historians, civic educators, and social scientists. In recent years, they have captured national attention through high-profile education reform proposals and…

Education in rural Scottish schools has changed rapidly over the past 15 years. These changes include the implementation of national curriculum and assessment guidelines, increased parental influence and a shift from local authority based management to more locally based schemes. During the 1990s, research in the field focused largely on learning…

This report traces the development of initiatives in British Columbia, Canada to provide formal instruction for adults of Aboriginal heritage (also known as native or indigenous peoples), regardless of whether the learner completed secondary school. Activities in public as well as Aboriginal-governed institutions are described. Shorter sections…

This paper analyses how historical narratives of the 1930s conflict between child-centred and social reconstructionist factions of US progressive education reinforce gendered constructions of education. The split between these two groups has been drawn along lines of gender with child-centred education associated with female educators focused on…

This review of 30 years of research in small rural schools in Sweden includes projects focusing directly upon rural education and rural schools, reports from national agencies, and official statistics. Two main foci were found: (i) the quality of education and pupils' academic performance, and (ii) the economics of running schools in different…

In 1918, Minnesota county superintendent Julius Arp argued that the greatest educational problem facing the American people was the Rural School Problem, saying: "There is no defect more glaring today than the inequality that exists between the educational facilities of the urban and rural communities. Rural education in the United States has…

Focusing on reading methods and practices in rural Indian Mexico at the turn of the twentieth century, this article explains why schooling had little impact in terms of literacy in Spanish yet played a successful political and ceremonial role resulting in what I call a ritual literacy. At the time, the emerging educational system did not consider…

Discusses teachers' memories of what it was like to teach reading in rural schools in the 1920s. (JM)

Over the past two decades, distance education has become a reality of rural schooling in Newfoundland and Labrador. In this article, I provide historical background into the challenges facing rural schools in the province and how distance education was introduced to address that challenge. I also describe how that system of distance education…

The marked tendency of Americans to look upon the rural Midwest as the "national reservoir of values" points to the need for deeper analyses and interpretation regarding the origins of Midwest rural education, focusing on analyses which square well with the realities of the rural Midwest today. (CB)

This article is based on an ethnographic study I conducted in southern Morocco during 2004. I explore the historical, ideological, and cultural background behind educational specialization among Moroccan university students. I describe how French colonial educational policies and postindependence Moroccan national schooling ideologies have created…

Case studies of women teachers in rural California, 1850-1950, explored the nature of knowledge, influence of language on social constructions of gender, and subjectivity in historical evidence. The study concluded that feminist history concerned with the constructed quality of evidence moves uneasily between historical narrative and…

Discusses the rural-urban dichotomy that regularly surfaces in educational history and argues that a full understanding of the role of cities is needed to overcome a rural romanticism that ill-serves public education policy. (CMG)

This article discusses the myth and reality of the ubiquitous one-room school in Canada. A marker of civilization, it bespoke a desire to spread the merits of education to the rugged laborers and their families in even the most remote areas of rural Canada. This historical vestige, particularly in the early-to-mid 20th century, painted a…