Purpose and Place: Schooling and Appalachian Residence.

Abstract

An exploratory analysis of the meanings families attach to schooling , this article is based upon interviews conducted with three white, middleclass families- one from rural West Virginia , another from a small West Virginia city ; and a third from rural Pennsylvania. I hoped that this preliminary effort would help me think about how families view their relationship to school in the context of locale and community, particularly in light of suburbanization and the popular devaluation of rural and Appalachian life. The two West Virginian families ultimately reported thinking of schooling as pragmatic preparation for an unstable and depressed job market, whereas the Pennsylvania family tended to focus more on the intellectual challenges offered their child at school. Most striking, in my view, was the rural West Virginian family's articulation of the tension they felt between, on one hand, supporting schooling as a means of investing in their daughter's future employment opportunities and, on the other hand, resisting schooling for the ways in which it undercut their rural commitments.

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