City Schools vs Country Schools

[farmerlor]

Of course, I'm really old but I grew up in a very small rural school too. At the beginning of hunting season all the boys would bring their guns to school in their cars and trucks and leave after school on friday to go hunting together. You could always count on the kids just missing a couple weeks out of the year during harvest season and nothing was ever said about it. Teachers were on stand by to help everyone get caught up and do extra assignments to make up for the work they missed. I rode my horse to school several times and would tie her up the goalposts. Once on a dare we stashed her in the boy's locker room. We used to get out for lunches when we were seniors and we'd all go down to the little bowling alley in town and snag pizza for lunch and never once did ONE of us get in trouble for disturbing the peace, stealing or coming back to school stoned or drunk.

 

[Spookwriter]

Daughters school is kindergarden through 7th. She's in the fifth with most
of the same children from her kindergarden year.

I bet my wife and I know 2/3's of the kids in her school. And most of the their
parents. Know all the staff. My daughters teacher this year? She lives two farms
over, her own daughter got married this past summer, and worse...when I was
a young Spook, I worked on the farm for her father and grandfather.

As parents, we come and go in her school. Doesn't bother me to drop by and check
the playground equipment.

So it's a small school where the parents interact. Community. Usually always somebodys
parents around.

Highschool where my daughter was in a play a while back was quite different. Locked
doors and guards. No fun.

Me, I'm a bit older. From a time when farmboys drove pickups to school, gunrack in the back
window.

 

[michickenwrangler]

In Michigan, all the rural schools north of Bay City get the opening day of rifle season off. When I did my methods in Bay City, the students there were quite miffed that the students in the northern part of the county had Nov. 15th off.

Actually, one of the schools I teach at might as well be an inner city school. 86% FREE lunch (usually a good poverty indicator), problems with drugs, teen pregnancy, dress codes and low academic performance. Students keep insisting that they don't need education because they'll go work on a farm.

 

[Mac in Wisco]

You know you live in rural Wisconsin when the lack of snowmobile parking for students is a serious matter on the school board agenda.

Our school had about 175 kids in the high school, I graduated with 45 others. My oldest son went to high school in a fairly large city. I found it kind of strange that his graduation was held in the local civic center and we got to see him graduate with several hundred of his classmates, from the nosebleed section. My youngest son now goes to the same high school that I did. The names and faces are all the same, just a generation younger.

 

[Ohne-Fehler]

I attended small rural schools all the way through my education including college. My university had 2,000 students on campus and the largest department was Agriculture. One of the best parts of a small school is that you have a more one on one relationship with your teachers. I remember deciding to skip Organic Chemistry one day to go on a trail ride with some friends. That night when I went to the gym to work out with the team I hopped on the elliptical and started my work out to look over at the machine next to me and find non other than my Organic Chemistry professor. Who proceeded to inquire as to where I had been during her class that day as I obviously wasn't sick.

Another interesting part of attending a small school was that your horse colicing was an acceptable excuse for skipping class. Likewise many of my friends from high school were amazed to discover that I would be taking a gun to college with me... because firearms were allowed in the dorms!

 

[mississippifarmboy]

Quote:
That sounds a lot like our school. I guess there were around 500 students in the whole school, K - 12. If I remember right we had 32 of us in our graduating class. It was a different world back then, but none of the BS and trouble that you see everyday on the news now.

All us boys had a two gun rack in the back window of our pick-ups, usually with a rifle and a shotgun in the rack. Every guy past first grade I'm sure had a pocket knife. On our lunch break during hunting season we'd all be out in the parking lot passing guns around, comparing them, talking calibers, stopping power etc.. Some of the teachers would even look them over and give us their opinions. No one got counted absent the first day of deer season. Since I had a trap line I ran on my way to and from school, I wore a belt knife all through school. It just wasn't a big thing back then. If you got in trouble it was for cutting class to go fishing, getting in a fight, or pulling practicle jokes like the time we turned a fox loose in the hall or the time someone dared me to ride my horse all the way through the school hallways from one end to the other during lunch break. No one ever got hurt and when you got caught, you got a paddling and another when you got home.

I remember one time some weird guy came on the school grounds acting crazy, messed up on drugs or something, and a couple of the teachers came and got a few of us boys out of class to go help take care of it. By the time our one town cop got there we had him tied up with baling twine in the back of my buddy's 4 X 4 and was sitting on the tailgate having a smoke.
Had a good laugh and went back to class.

Wasn't any school shootings or dope pushers in a small country school like our's.

 

[PineappleMama]

W'ford, population 15k or so, seemed like normal to me from 1st-9th... but then we moved to Arlington.

Valentine's Day was my first day here, and my first experience with a knife fight at school. Drugs dogs and police on campus.
Oh and I had to go back down to middle school, where before I was a high school freshman, that sucked royally.

Of course our senior year W'ford decided to be more like Arlington and moved their fishes down, and Arlington went more like W'ford and moved theirs up.

I do know that Bio for instance there was more funding available per student... our Arlington class did worm and frog, with partner, labs.
Out there my friends did those plus crayfish, pig, shoot what was the other one... whatever, it was a more detailed NOT honors class.

Then there was my stint in Arkansas... Oak Grove High School... not even as large as my W'ford Elementary (and W'ford had at least 5) and this housed 7th-12th grades. Maddeningly small, claustrophobic small, and a LONG bus ride to get there... esp. with me being first on and last off. Thought it was a lucky break when teachers ONLY AT MY SCHOOL went on strike... not so much. You ever spent two weeks alone in the boonies, nearest library being a good twenty minute drive, you with no car, and the nearest business of any kind was down a winding two lane road with ditches on each side (sic no one walks on it) and that business was a liquor store. SO not cool. Probably could have hacked it if not for that strike but I was going bedbug crazy and had to come back to Arlington (and my previously mentioned nutty mom) to keep my sanity.

Now my kids attended Arlington elementary school, supposedly one of the best in the district, where DH attended as a child... well, let's just say we're homeschooling now and leave the knocks to the employees at that. The PTA... *growl* I'm a worker right? They ran all of us workers off, not the right income bracket, clothes, husband's careers, house, etc... and then wonder why nothing gets done? Boy oh boy was I mad when I was first 'blackballed'... but then the results of their hatefulness kicked in and the few decent folks left were SO stressed because everything was dumped on them... I'm talking ulcers here. Then I didn't feel so mad, so much as just sad for the great parents and for the kids. Drama is for Movie Night, not every day life. Oh speaking of HSing, I've got a topic in Family where I'm asking opins on curriculum if anyone has any WoW they're willing to share.

 

[magicpigeon]

I went to a private girls school in North Sydney (A_b_t_l_i_h), where literally everything and anything was prohibited. Scissors were banned except when being monitored by a teacher well into 5th grade. Talking in class was worth a detention. Forgetting PE uniform - detention. Lastly, my personal favourite, writing nasty things about a certain teacher, which one of my friends did on facebook - EXPULSION!!

 

[KristyHall]

Small country schools where everyone knows everyone isn't always a good thing.
I grew up in rural Alabama as a non Christian mix blood and boy did I catch heck for it. I was beat up on a daily bases, singled out and tormented and the teachers either looked the other way or encouraged it. We were below the poverty line and my parents had no legal recourse.
I was told by teachers i should go to their church, and since many students were related to the teachers they would often punish me for fighting back. I would be questioned in class about my religion and then told that my mothers people had no religion until Europeans brought it to us savages, and told my beliefs were stupid by fellow students in front of teachers who did nothing.
By the time I was twelve I had been hospitalized with suicide attempts and had stopped fighting back because I was labeled a troubled child and was often the only one punished for fighting. Finally in jr high I was kicked out of the school when I snapped. A girl tried to push me into a 12 foot deep pit where I was sitting and reading and I lost it and beat the living daylights out of her.
The only school that would take me was one that had a program for troubled kids where we were isolated, each were followed by guards, and were often punished somewhat harshly for minor infractions such as talking out of turn. I was the scapegoat.
If something went wrong it was me who was blamed. I was the weird kid who didn't go to church, was bi lingual and wore strange clothes. And don't get me started on how anyone who was suspected of being gay was treated.
High school was different. No one knew me there and I kept to myself, so no one bothered me. I didn't care that I was largely ignored because it meant no one was going top torture me. I have physical scars from my experiences in elementary and jr. high.
Many school shootings are triggered by students who were so badly bullied without any recourse on their behalf. No I am not saying it was acceptable what the shooters did but I certainly can see how it was triggered. That is, if the tormented students don't kill themselves or turn to drugs and alcohol to ease their misery first. That's something else I have seen too.
I still live in this town and my children will NOT be going to the school I went to. If I do relent and let them go there, I will be a very clear presence there watching for any signs of abuse. I am not a poor, over worked mother like mine was. My children will hold their heritage and religion with pride without fear of persistent bullying.
This is my home and I'll be darned if I'll be run out of it by ignorance. Luckily I have people in my life now that are good and kind people of many different races and religions. Unfortunately they have suffered similar troubles in their own rural schools.
I am disturbed by the promotion of getting local school boys to handle a problem with someone on campus acting strangely. It's not cool or funny. Teenage boys tieing up someone who could have had psychological problems or illness with twine is not wise. Teenagers often go way over board. Students should not be dispatched to physically handle problems especially if its with something they do not understand like someone on campus acting strangely.
Yes small towns have their advantages, but they also have their evils and should not be overly romanticized.

 

[Goose and Fig]

I would kill to have the kind of schools that we had in the city here. My graduating class was 900 kids. The high school graduation rate is 98%. Its a given- NOBODY drops out. Who would ever think of NOT going to college or trade school? There were financial aid people to make sure everybody had a shot at higher education.

But HERE- 56% graduation rate! They call the schools "dropout factories" and the residents are fine with it. It makes me SICK. I can't believe schools can even be allowed to stay open with numbers that bad. That's what happens when everybody in town is related and the same people are constantly in charge. God forbid there be any progress!