Do Rural People Place a Lower Value on Formal Education?: New Evidence from National Surveys.

As reflected in rural Sociology textbooks, rural sociologists have typically believed that rural people in general and Farmers in particular, place a much lower value on formal education than do their urban counterparts (Bertrand, 1958:229; Rogers and Bertrand. 1972:152). Most of us have known this fact for so long that we do not remember where we learned it or in what studies this empirical generalization was first set forth. Thus, we argue that the notion of a lower priority among rural people for formal education has become part and parcel of our rural subdisciplinary wisdom. The purpose of this brief note is to question this traditional wisdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]