A study to determine whether educational discrepancies exist between urban and rural sections of Liberia used descriptive analysis to examine curriculum, instructional personnel and facilities, finances, and administrative organization. Sources of data included official documents from the Liberian Ministry of Education; the education section of the 1980-81 report of the Ministry of Planning and Economic Affairs; United Nations publications on education in developing countries; the senior researcher's experiences as a rural school student in Liberia and later as a youth coordinator and an Assistant Director of Teacher Education in the Ministry of Education; and publications about Liberian social, cultural, economic, political, and educational life. Major findings included that 40% or fewer of rural schools followed the prescribed curricula, relevance of which may be questioned because of a high dropout rate; and the level of teacher qualification was low, a greater problem in rural schools, half of whose teachers had a high school education or less. Other major findings were that all school facilities were below standards required for effective school programs; a general lack of funding for education existed, especially for elementary schools; and ministry reports verified an imbalance in the central educational administration, to the detriment of rural schools, primarily because of problems of transportation and communication. (Author/MH)