Benefits2 is a series of papers addressing ways that rural schools and communities can work together so that both will thrive. The previous three issues described two broad types of projects that address both curricular and community goals: service learning, which combines community service with structured opportunities to apply academic learning; and entrepreneurial education, which provides the community with needed products and resources while teaching students academic and work-related skills. This issue focuses in greater depth on the kinds of changes and commitments needed from school systems if these types of projects are to succeed.

hat do these two quotations have to do with one another? From SEDL’s perspective as an agency concerned with helping rural schools to survive in an increasingly urban world, these sentences suggest both the challenge and the imperative for grounding rural education within the context of the community.

The statistics on school closings and consolidation, the descriptions of rural communities struggling to survive when nearby factories move to the Pacific Rim, data regarding the nation’s population shift from countryside to city – all these are familiar, and discouraging. Yet some rural communities and their schools are finding ways to survive.

The strategies they use are as varied as the surrounding landscapes. But what these rural places have in common is a willingness to change: a spirit that encourages risk-taking, openness to new ideas, and—above all—a commitment to breaking through the rigid compartmentalization within which the old industrial model of progress has confined us.

As previous issues of this publication have described, a principal strategy for survival involves joint efforts that engage students in helping to develop community resources. Service learning and entrepreneurial education place student learning in a community context. Students learn academic, work, and citizenship skills in real-world settings, for example, by helping to staff community health clinics or by operating a local newspaper, retail shop, or construction business.

These kinds of activities offer tremendous benefits to students, school, and community alike. But they require substantial changes from the usual ways in which schools function. As Bruce Miller (1995) cautions:

It needs to be kept in mind that the changes implied in building a community-school development project where students engage in community-based learning experiences are essentially questions about changing the way schools go about preparing rural youth for the future. (p. 7)

This issue of Benefits² focuses on the kinds of changes that may be demanded of your school system as you begin to plan and implement community-based learning strategies. The discussion is organized into two major categories: changes in perspective, and changes in policy and practice. Changes in perspective are perhaps the hardest to achieve, and often must precede more practical ones.

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