Transitions from Rural to Urban Schooling

Abstract

The urbanization of the past two centuries that has affected virtually all sections of the globe has had dramatic and transformative influences on rural communities and their schools. The industrialization of Europe and North America in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has been mirrored by rapid changes over the past half-century in the countries of the Global South—Asia, Africa, and Latin America—although many of these more recent dynamics are quite distinct. Whereas standard historical narratives treated the growth of rural school enrollments on all continents as a byproduct of economic development or the result of deliberate state-building and elite imposition, more recent historiography has challenged these traditional views, pointing to evidence that peasants, locals, and indigenous groups often created their own schools or issued demands for education and academic skills well before economic expansion or compulsory attendance laws.