Reviews an ethnographic analysis of Teach for America, a 1990 educational reform program that illustrates how underlying assumptions about "marginal" urban and rural students and their "deficient" environments solidify existing power structures, acculturate students to middle-class norms, generate resistance to teachers, and ensure failure to…

Reviews essays by Raymond Williams, which explain how, within the context of a 150-year literary history, rural stereotypes have been constructed and imbedded within a collective consciousness by a form of cultural colonization. Suggests that Williams' insights can help rural education researchers think outside the conventional wisdom that…

Reviews a book that documents the circumstances surrounding the closure of a small, rural West Virginia high school. The book's strength derives largely from its crossing of disciplinary borders to address social, political, and economic factors that have influenced changing educational values and the trend toward consolidation in rural West…

Reviews a book that describes changes affecting rural America including the farm crisis, growing poverty, and in-migration of those who contribute little to the local economy. Addresses implications for rural service delivery and government policy. (LP)

Reviews a book that overviews the history of rural England and the factors that contributed to the decline of England's rural communities. One hundred years later in rural America, similar factors and pervasive cultural assumptions about rural ignorance are related to the shifting of political and economic power away from rural communities. (LP)

Reviews a book about the history of a small rural school in Braxton County, West Virginia. Argues that consolidation and eventual closure of this school resulted from political, economic, social, and cultural forces that failed to recognize the important relationship between the school and the community. Reflects on the reviewer's own previous…