In this volume Michael Corbett demonstrates the remarkable depth of his knowledge as
well as the care and sensitivity with which he encounters rural cultural settings. Quite
simply, in his empirical and cultural study of the coastal fishing town of Digby Neck,
Nova Scotia, Corbett asks why contemporary schools have failed rural communities and,
more importantly, what can be done about it?
In answering this timely question, Corbett critiques the conventional tendencies to
present the rural as being somehow deficient or emblematic of a pathology of place (33)
As Corbett notes, the typical formulation of the rural education issue is constructed
around the untenable assumption that rural inhabitants must learn to sever irrational
regional attachments which hinder any prospect of individual mobility and success. This
modernist, deficiency construct model, views rural communities as fated to languish
hopelessly beyond the pale of modern, progressive, post - industrial society.nTreslan