Rural Futurability: Education for Power, Potency, and Possibility

• In Event: Intersections of Rural Economics, Health, and Education

Abstract

This paper uses Franco Berardi’s Futurability to provide a critical examination of rural education, the manner in which it can limit radical imagination, as well as how it can be shaped to create new possibilities for the future. Using Berardi’s theory as a critical lens, the author looks at existing research into rural education, specifically the corporatization of schools to describe how narrow, capitalist thinking is educating students into seeing themselves as mere economic actors whose value is tied to ability to work. Berardi explains that economic thinking limits the ability for people to determine and shape their own futures, eliminating possibilities for emancipation from the neoliberal capitalism that shape rural schools and communities.

Author

• Jason A. Cervone, University of California - Los Angeles