Rural Education and Workforce Development: Moving Beyond the Mobility Imperative

• In Event: Equitably Preparing Youth for Careers in the Changing World of Work

Abstract

How do rural schools and communities support young people as they develop plans for adult lives? Rural areas have disproportionately struggled with selective outmigration, loss of human capital, aging rural populations, and economic challenges associated with deindustrialization, contractions in the agricultural sector, and global economic integration (Bock, et al., 2016; Brown & Schafft, 2019; Čikić & Petrović, 2015; Corbett, 2020; Makkai, et al., 2017; Tomasik & Silbereisen, 2012). These struggles are only intensified when the spatial peripherality of rural places is matched by various political and economic peripheralities. An all-too-common rural narrative is one of deficit. That is, rural places are seen as “backwards,” under-resourced, economically under-developed—places that bright young people must leave behind in order to achieve “success.”

What then are the potential intersections and disconnects between rural education and rural development, especially if the implicit or explicit messaging received by young people is that success lies elsewhere beyond the (rural) home community (Corbett, 2020)? How do rural youth negotiate the crosscurrents of identity, place attachment, transitions to adulthood, the economic calculus of shifting local, regional, national and indeed global labor markets, and educational, occupational, and residential aspirations (see, e.g., Corbett, 2020; Petrin, Schafft, & Meece, 2014; Roberts, 2003; Šuvar, 1988; Vazzana & Rudi-Polloshka, 2019)? How do schools, as (rural) community institutions, contribute to the well-being of rural people and places (Schafft, 2016), or alternately undermine local social and economic sustainability and function as a primary mechanism of human capital creation for “rural export” (Lichter, McLaughlin, & Cornwell, 1995)?

As local institutions rural schools can play particularly integrative roles for the communities they serve, functioning as a node of local social interaction and a civic space, helping to create social solidarity and shared community identity (Baraket, 2014; Budge, 2006; Kovács, 2012; Tieken, 2014). On the other hand, rural schools can also be instruments of social exclusion, reinforcing and reproducing local inequalities (Kovács, 2012). In this panel discussion I draw from and synthesize recent domestic and international work outlining the challenges and contradictions facing rural students and rural schooling in the context of reconciling educational attainment, workforce development, and rural well-being and sustainability. Domestic work includes a mixed methods national-level study focused on how community context shapes rural youth aspirations, as well as a second set of studies examining how young people (re)evaluate their life opportunities in the context of rapid “boomtown” shale gas development. International work draws from a soon-to-be-published edited collection focused on rural youth and community development within post-socialist and transitional society contexts. I use these studies to comment on rural community in trans-national contexts, and the challenges, contradictions and opportunities posed by rural youth and their home communities.

Author

• Kai A. Schafft, The Pennsylvania State University