As the Belin-Blank Center works on the preliminary National Assessment of Gifted Education in Rural and Small Schools, we find these words to ring true. At first glance, finding a working definition of rural seems like an easy enough task. The realities of rural life in the 1990s, however, don't fit a Norman Rockwell stereotype. Dwindling industries such as logging, fishing, and mining can no longer employ large numbers of rural people. Instead, manufacturing is the biggest employer, with service industries, including tourism, close behind.
Many rural people are underemployed, relying on part-time or temporary work.
Partly as a result of this trend, rural families and their inner-city counterparts have equally high poverty rates. Also, rural America is demographically older than the rest of the country. Because the best and brightest often leave these small towns, the communities never actualize a return on their educational dollars. We have also interviewed gifted students and administrators from small communities throughout the country. Slowly, a picture is beginning to develop.