Introduction

The Essex County teenagers discussed in Chapter 4 were influenced in their school enrollment decisions not only by their family situations but by the communities in which they lived. We also noted, in Chapter 2, that enrollment rates varied by town size in early nineteenth-century Massachusetts. Indeed, one of the strong motivations for undertaking our study of Massachusetts education was our interest in the rural–urban dimension of educational history. In this chapter we broaden our scope again, from the eight Essex County towns to all of the towns in the state, and we move from the individual to the town as a unit of analysis. Using a file of town-level data from censuses and state school reports, we shall investigate the relationship between various educational trends and several types of community characteristics. We also hope to clarify some of the conceptual problems involved in using urbanization as an explanation of educational change.

American laymen have long perceived important differences between rural and urban schools. The little red schoolhouse of the countryside has a hallowed place in popular educational lore. Despite this rosy, nostalgic view, however, educators have generally taken a negative view of rural education, beginning as early as the mid-nineteenth century, when the process of schooling became professionalized. Their criticism stemmed partly from their impulse to centralize and standardize education, which rural districts resisted, and partly from their admiration for the apparent efficiency and elegance of large, differentiated institutions, which rural schools lacked.