It Takes a Village: Schooling, Community, and Identity in Rural America

• In Event: Possible and (Im)Possible Futures: Public Education in Diverse Rural Americas

Abstract

Given the current political polarization in the United States (Biddle & Hall, 2017) - which strongly parallels the urban-rural geographic divide - this paper is a preliminary inquiry into how schools influence, and are influenced by, identity politics. I argue that rural schools are dynamic places in which changing demographics are exposing cultural conflicts over the purpose of schooling (Corbett, 2007; DeYoung, 1995) and the future for which schooling prepares the communities’ youth (Carr & Kefalas, 2009). Therefore, rural schools exist in a paradoxical relationship with their communities as both agents of social reproduction (Apple, 1995) and community identity (Tieken, 2014) as well as disseminators of national values and expectations (Peshkin, 1978). This paper investigates how rural schools reinforce community identity while also reproducing social inequality.

Research in rural development and education proffer community as a relatively unproblematic social construction (Corbett, 2014); however, by their very nature, communities are exclusionary (Defilippis, Fisher, & Shragge, 2006) and may have oppressive repercussions for those left out of membership (Joseph, 2002). In conversation with recent scholarship on the intersection of political and spatial identities (e.g. Cramer, 2016; Hochschild, 2016), my work shows that rural schools have a considerable role in maintaining a community’s socio-spatial (Soja, 2010) and socio-cultural boundaries.

The empirical data in this paper is based on a year-long ethnographic study of a remote, rural community in Northern Wisconsin. In the tradition of critical ethnography, my methodological approach situates rural schooling within historical, economic, and political developments as well as calls attention to the generation of resistance and unanticipated consequences within and among rural communities (Corbett, 2015). The findings are based on multiple sources of data, including 59 semi-structured interviews with a broad range of participants (i.e. school officials & employees; residents; business leaders), 170 hours of field notes; school and community documents. The analytic process involved multiple levels of coding, including deductive and inductive codes (Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014). This iterative process revealed pertinent themes around community identity: political abandonment and resentment, strong adherence to community values, and participation in community life, as well as exclusionary discourses around poverty and race.

In Forest Lake , the intersection of rurality with other forms of identity (e.g. race, class, and longevity of residence) illuminates the growing pains of a remote rural community enmeshed in a globalized world. Based on the analysis, I argue that the construction of community identity in Forest Lake is both protective and conservative in function, ultimately constraining the imagined futures available for the community’s growth and well-being. In fact, my research implies that it is precisely these qualities that may need to be challenged in order to increase the potential of community and school survival. Such insight also suggests further research into social justice education in rural schools may be useful in addressing broader societal concerns around place, equity, and identity.

Author

• Jennifer Laura Seelig, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison