The reproduction of rural spaces through education: Abstraction of the rural and the creation of new differential spaces

Abstract

This paper examines the situating of rural communities in the United States within the neoliberal global context. It will focus on Henri Lefebvre's concept of abstract space, as well as additional theories on the ways space is produced and understood. The paper will use these theories to create an understanding of the ways rural communities are shaped and the role education plays in reproducing neoliberal ideology specifically through rural school consolidation. Abstracted rural space and schools are leading rural youth to internalize neoliberal ideology wherein they see themselves as economic actors rather than active engaged members of their community, and the best way to be successful is to gain the mobility to move to an urban center. Under this line of thought, rural exists only to serve capital as a site of resource extraction and low wage labor. The paper will conclude with a discussion on the way rural education can provide rural youth with the knowledge in which to produce rural spaces that represent what a modern rural community should be, focusing on improving the quality of life for residents, rather than what neoliberal capitalism needs it to be through the creation of common schools. This type of education can lead to the development of a right to the rural, a play off of Lefebvre's right to the city, wherein rural youth can critically examine their place and the place of rural communities in the world.

Introduction

The purpose of this article is to use the works of Henri Lefebvre in an effort to understand rural communities in the United States, specifically as they relate to rural education. It will examine the ways rural spaces have been produced historically through capitalist influences; and how these spaces are being reshaped through modern neoliberal capitalism. Space, in this sense, is not only the physical environment, but also refers to the state of minds of those living in rural areas, which are being shaped through neoliberal education policy and the abstraction of schools themselves. Abstraction of schools will be described both figuratively, through a decontextualized, positivistic curriculum; and literally, through the consolidation of districts and closing of rural community schools. This article will utilize several of Lefebvre's major theories, that of the abstraction of space, wherein it will be examined how neoliberalism is creating spaces that are at odds with the needs and everyday lives of rural dwellers; rhythmanalysis, wherein Lefebvre's belief that a place's life can be understood and analyzed through the understanding of the rhythms of everyday life; and finally the right to the city, which will be reframed as a right to the rural where the ways in which rural dwellers can create differential spaces, reclaiming their everyday lives from neoliberal abstraction, through a reclamation of the commons and creation of common schools will be examined. Lefebvre himself was against the fragmentation of knowledge (Middleton, 2014), and in that vein each of these individual ideas will be woven together to show that they are interrelated and all are necessary for a full understanding of production of rural space through education.

Lefebvre on rural space

Lefebvre remains an important figure to engage with for rural educators, as much of the research and scholarship regarding space and capitalist development is focused on cities. While urbanization and the city are critical aspects of Lefebvre's work, he also spent a great amount of time in France's rural villages and closely examined the effects of urbanization on the rural, as well as the relationships between the country and the city; Merrifield (2006) notes that Lefebvre's earliest research was on rural populations in the Pyrenees, specifically primitive accumulation and rural rent. Merrifield describes that Lefebvre believed the rural peasantry was extremely important in the study of socialist history, notably the way the symbiosis between urban and rural was destroyed by the increasing drive towards capitalist accumulation. Stanek provides an in-depth discussion of Lefebvre's early rural work:

The study begins with a “provisory” definition of a rural community, which is qualified in the course of the investigation. A rural community is described as a social association that organizes, around the historically determined modalities, a group of families attached to land. This is specified by three factors that define a rural community: the presence of both private and collective property; the essential role of families in the structure of the village; and the delegation of tasks to representatives, who are directly responsible to the community. (Stanek, 2011: 54)

Like much of Lefebvre's work, this should not be considered a complete or strict definition of rural, but rather a starting point to begin closer examination. In education today, the term rural has only been loosely identified, with such factors as population and distance to major metropolitan centers being a standard definition. These factors fall woefully shy of creating a true definition. For the purposes of this writing, the term rural will remain vague and undefined, as any attempt to do so can essentialize or fall short of completely being able to describe what rural truly is. Returning to Stanek's (2011) writing, Lefebvre also did not attempt to define the rural, but rather chose to examine the relationships between people and phenomena that create everyday rural life. Lefebvre saw the rural community as a struggle between changing property relationships, family structures, and democratic institutions. In a sense, rural is not the idyllic, unchanging environment that it is often romanticized to be, but a dynamic, ever-changing geography that is constantly struggling against new modes of production. He described rural communities as “characterized by a ‘horizontal’ complexity, which concerns the differences among synchronous agrarian structures stemming from differences in technologies and social structures, and by a “vertical” complexity, which originates from the “coexistence of formations differing in age and date” (Stanek, 2011: 16). It can be difficult to grasp, or fully characterize the complexities of rural communities, even through a close reading of Lefebvre's work. However, that remains less important than the understanding of the processes acting on rural communities, specifically through capitalist abstraction of rural spaces. The commodification of rural communities through capitalism destroys the lived spaces in rural communities in an effort to homogenize and fragment those spaces in order to create economic efficiency (Stanek, 2011). In practice, this can be seen as the complete domination of nature. Smith (1984) describes the way nature has been fragmented from human society, therefore being positioned as something external, existing in order to be tamed. From there comes the homogenization, as certain areas are zoned for certain industries, such as massive industrial agricultural operations (Lerner, 2015), or landscapes being literally flattened through mountaintop removal mining (Ross et al., 2016). In education, economic efficiency is attempted through school consolidation, under the false belief that larger schools are more cost-effective than small, community schools (Lyson, 2002).

Abstracting rural space

Neoliberalism is both an economic and cultural ideology that calls for the privatization of public goods and services, and the deregulation of government control over markets (Saltman, 2014). As Edmondson (2003) describes, neoliberalism paints the rural way of life as inefficient and ill-equipped to prepare rural citizens for the globalized economy. Neoliberal solutions to rural poverty came down to simply creating more jobs regardless of what benefit those industries could offer the community. The notion that the market would fix everything led to an increased gap between rich and poor and the further erosion of rural communities' ability to maintain power and sustain local economic practices. Neoliberal ideology has become accepted as the logical solution to rural poverty, and state and government officials have embraced the narrative of economic development as job creation at any cost without regard to sustainable enterprises (Donehower et al., 2007).

In order to remain viable, neoliberalism must constantly shape and reshape space to meet its needs. For rural communities in the United States, this means modernization. Modernization in the neoliberal sense is an ambiguous term generally referring to corporate restructuring of rural land with an increasing use of industrial technology for greater output in agriculture, logging, mining, or whatever the local industry needs. Modernization also meant the capturing and control of rural land by urban capitalists, creating a de facto colonization in which rural America was forced to accept the industrial capitalist system but never share in the wealth or be truly integrated into capitalist society. Smith (1984) writes that capitalists claimed modernization would eventually create economic equilibrium, when in fact it not only created disequilibrium, but also actually requires growing inequality or uneven development in order to survive. Harvey (2006) described the conditions for this uneven development, which include embedding capitalist processes into everyday life, and commodifying and appropriating everything formerly held in common. Both these processes play heavily in rural education today, which will be more closely examined later in this article.

The spread of industrialization to rural areas can be understood through Lefebvre's idea of the “urban fabric” (Lefebvre, 1970/2003: 3). “Local and regional features,” Lefebvre writes, “changed into a form of industrial production… Economic growth and industrialization have become self-legitimating. As a result, the village has been transformed” (Lefebvre, 1970/2003: 5); Lefebvre (1970/2003) notes that urban fabric does not mean the city in general, but rather the domination of the country by urban processes. Beyond industrialization, this also includes highways, strip malls, and vacation homes for wealthy urbanites. It should be noted that Lefebvre (1970/2003) differentiated between the city and the urban, wherein the city was the built form, a specific place, while urban is socially constructed; when Lefebvre mentions the urban he refers to “the society that results from industrialization” (Lefebvre, 1970/2003: 2). For the purposes of this writing, this idea has been expanded to neoliberal industrialization, the processes that seek to modernize rural areas in the effort to increase capitalist accumulation. Any resistance to neoliberal modernization becomes viewed as backwards and standing in the way of progress (Thomas et al., 2011).

Theobald (1997) wrote that since the beginning of the 20th century, the United States has seen an increasing move away from democracy and towards an acceptance of capitalist ideology as natural progress. With this move came a tacit acceptance of Social Darwinism. Rural communities were simply victims of this supposed progress as those who did not wish to modernize were viewed as being not economically fit enough to survive. Theobald (1997) also notes that it is during this time period when rural schools moved from a community-based education towards an educational system that reproduced the capitalist ideology that would further hasten the demise of rural communities. Lefebvre (1974/1991) describes that space can be shaped and reshaped in order to meet certain needs, in the rural United States, space was shaped to meet the needs of capitalism, and in modern times neoliberalism has shaped space to greatly increase production times. Lefebvre introduces the idea of “abstract space,” the space that is created by capitalism that is “formal and quantitative” and “erases distinctions” (Lefebvre, 1974/1991: 49). Abstracting rural space requires destroying anything that would challenge the dominant ideology and reshaping space in order to meet the needs of capitalistic accumulation. Lefebvre describes abstract space as being supported by “non-critical” (Lefebvre, 1974/1991: 52) or positivistic knowledge and maintained through a capitalist bureaucracy. To simplify, through abstraction, capitalism is able to erase rural space and then commodify it, using education to reify capitalist ideology in the minds of rural youth.

Abstracting rural youth

As mentioned previously, it is not just physical space that is being produced, but mental space as well. Much has been written in regards to the ways education affects the mindsets of rural youth and the way they view themselves in a global context (Carr and Kefalas, 2009; Corbett, 2007; Haas, 1992; Hektner, 1995; Ley et al., 1996; Sherman and Sage, 2011). Sherman and Sage (2011) noted that many parents in rural areas encourage their children to do well in school as a way to leave the community in search of better economic opportunities. Edmondson and Butler (2010) explain that students are placed into competition with each other where the winners, the most academically and economically successful, are those who get to leave. Students are not taught to question neoliberal policy or to critically examine the effects on their home communities, and rural America in general. Edmondson and Butler continue to describe teachers as “technicians employing the best technologies available to prepare students for yet-unknown jobs being created in a high tech, globalized world” (Edmondson and Butler, 2010: 161).

In essence, urban life has become the ideal for the modern world, an ideal that is reflected in education, which portrays rural life as in decline (Haas and Nachtigal, 1998). Schooling then creates a divide in rural communities, where those who do well academically are groomed to leave the community to enter the modern urban world, whereas those who are resistant are ignored and left behind (Carr and Kefalas, 2009; Corbett, 2007). Rural youth are often conflicted about whether or not to leave their communities, as many still value rural life despite feeling pushed out by their schools (Ley et al., 1996). In general, much of the research around rural youth, as well as rural communities occurs in a “spatial vacuum” (Thomas et al., 2011). That is, the research examines sociological, economic, political, and educational processes at work without much consideration to geography and the way space is produced through all these actors. Education research around rural youth often examines the ways in which rural life effects students, and the kinds of students produced by rural schools, but it does not turn that idea around to look at the converse, that is, the way the idea of what is rural is being shaped by education. Rural – and urban, for that matter – should not be viewed as a constant by educational researchers, but rather a socially constructed, living environment.

Lefebvre and education

Before digging into rural education from a Lefebvrian viewpoint, it is first important to understand why Lefebvre matters for education in general, and how his spatial theories can be applied. The writings and theories of Henri Lefebvre have been embraced in recent years by numerous educational researchers as part of the so-called ‘spatial turn’ in scholarship. This spatial turn is seen through the analysis of geography – particularly urban – within broader educational inquiry (Middleton, 2014). Middleton (2014) described educational geography as an underdeveloped field, even as educational researchers in general began to question the role of space and place within education. Lefebvre himself did not write often of education, though he maintained an interest in pedagogical practices. In his time as a professor, Lefebvre was often critical of the fragmentation of knowledge (Middleton, 2014), which parallels his geographic philosophies that are so focused on taking the actors of spatial production as a whole, and recognizing the connections between them. Middleton (2014) also describes Lefebvre as being critical of philosophers who sought to create high theories. These theories, Lefebvre believed were irrelevant to everyday life. School itself provides a number of examples for the ideas Lefebvre proposed. One of these ideas is that of the spatial triad (Lefebvre, 1974/1991). Lefebvre's spatial triad of perceived–conceived–lived spaces all play out in the school building, and are described by Middleton (2014) as spaces are the social space, the building itself, the landscape, and the habits of everyday classroom; such as walking the halls and sitting at the desks. These are the practices that make up student life. Conceived spaces are the abstract spaces created by bureaucracy. These are the supposed logical or commodified spaces – as Lefebvre may describe them – that shape the school, such as the schedule and the physical separation of administrative departments. Conceived spaces are the enclosures that shape the students’ perceived spaces – the spaces as the dominant ideology wants school spaces to be. Finally, there are the lived spaces; the spaces created by the meanings attached to them through everyday living (Middleton, 2014). As mentioned earlier, Lefebvre did not believe in fragmenting knowledge and the spatial triad cannot be understood by simply looking at one of its parts, it must be taken as a whole. Middleton (2014) explains that conceived spaces cannot be the basis for education, as they reduce the lived experience. One of these conceived spaces, as alluded to previously is the consolidated school.

Consolidation as abstraction

Before taking consolidation from a Lefebvrian viewpoint, it is important to understand what consolidation looks like in practice and the tremendous effects it can have on rural communities. School consolidation is based on the fallacious notion that large regional schools can produce a better education at a lower cost than small, community schools, resulting in the closing of schools across small towns and villages in the U.S. This generally occurs when state and federal agencies set definitions for what the appropriate size of a school should be, and how many students must be served to remain economically viable (DeYoung and Howley, 1990). Too often, school consolidation can represent the end of small towns themselves as well, as those who set the definitions are usually basing them off of large urban and suburban districts. Lyson (2002) found in his study of rural schools and villages in upstate New York that towns and villages with their own schools are often far better off socially and economically, with higher housing values and better developed infrastructure than those who send students to regional schools. There is also higher civic employment, with the school itself being an important source of jobs. Conversely, when schools consolidate the communities often witness greater outmigration and unemployment. Lyson (2002) concludes that the small rural school “serves as an important marker of social and economic viability and vitality”.

Lyson's (2002) findings though based in a small area represent an example of the problems school consolidation is bringing to rural communities. The main drive behind consolidation has been the incorrect economic theory that larger schools are both more efficient and of higher quality. Howley et al. (2011) reported findings similar to Lyson (2002) on a national scale, while also finding that deconsolidation was much more likely to provide economic benefits, showing that smaller community schools were actually more economically efficient than large, centralized schools. Additionally, they found there were no measurable educational benefits, showing that students did not perform better in larger schools, even by the standardized testing provided by those pushing consolidation. While consolidation would most likely cut down on administrative overhead, the research is still mixed on whether it does actually provide more financially viable schools (Howley et al., 2011) as the schools being shut down have such a small number of students, that cutting the per pupil expenditure makes only a minor difference. On the other side, larger schools require larger transportation budgets, security, guidance, and building management. If the effects on finances are mixed at best, the effect on teaching and learning is clearly negatively affected by consolidation. Many students are left with longer school days, as they can spend more than an hour on the bus each way; they have fewer opportunities for extra-curricular activities, and receive less individualized attention.

The consolidated school is summed up nearly perfectly by Lefebvre's description of spatial abstraction. He describes active abstraction as a tool of urban space that sought to envelop and control nature followed by a second phase that neatly sums up the underlying ideology at play in consolidation:

(The state would take over and) the towns would lose control of space and dominion over the forces of production… The economic sphere was destined to burst out of its urban context; that context would itself be overturned in the process, although the town would survive as a centre, as the locus of a variety of compromises. (Lefebvre, 1974/1991: 269)

School consolidation stems from the economic and positivistic viewpoint of standardization and measurability. Lefebvre described abstract space as being in contradiction with everyday life. He writes: “the dominant tendency, therefore, is toward the disappearance of the qualitative” (Lefebvre, 1974/1991: 352). From this viewpoint, numerous small community schools do not make as much sense as one big school where everyone can be tracked and measured. However, as Lyson (2002) found, even by quantitative measures, consolidated schools are not showing a benefit. Regardless of the standards used to measure, consolidation is failing.

Middleton (2014) explains that conceived spaces, such as the abstract space of the consolidated school, cannot be the basis for education, as they reduce the lived experience. In this vein, Fordsuggests a “pedagogy for space” (Ford, 2016: 176) that builds on Lefebvre's (1974/1991) spatial triad of representations of space, representational space, and spatial practice – often simplified to perceived-conceived-lived.

Production of educational spaces

Ford describes representations of space as a “bird's-eye-view” (Ford, 2016: 182), that is, the way space is ordered, planned, and produced. Representational space is described as lived space, the spaces produced through everyday life of the inhabitants. Ford (2016) describes spatial practice as the reproduction of social class and relations. Lefebvre (1974/1991) referred to this as perceived space, defined as the spaces which structure everyday life. Merrifield (2006) took note of the vagueness of Lefebvre's descriptions, but saw it as an opportunity for future scholars to explore the triad further in order to integrate it into their work. Ford (2016) introduces an educational triad to build on the spatial triad. The first aspect of this educational triad is learning, the educational equivalent of representations of space, and the measurable outcomes of education. The second is studying, or representational space, wherein the student engages with the official knowledge, questioning and criticizing it. Studying is not about learning something specific but rather has no end in mind; the students are free to follow their own curiosities. The third aspect is teaching, wherein the teacher brings something new to the student. Ford describes the second two pieces of the triad as needing to be “situated in a critique of political economy” or they can easily be “subsumed within capitalism and relations of oppression and exploitation” (Ford, 2016: 187).

Spatial practices also create, or limit, depending on how it occurs, sites of encounters. Merrifield reminds that the city is the “supreme site of encounters” (Merrifield, 2013: xvii), though that definition can be stretched to the country as well. Encounters may be fewer in rural areas, but the opportunity for rural youth to encounter politically, that is to politically engage with their communities, is no less important. Ford (2013) builds on Biesta's (2006) work to outline a space of educational encounter. In order to do so, educators must be facilitators of encounter and create the spaces “where encounters can take place” (Ford, 2013: 302). A consolidated school destroys the ability to create encounter, as it is an artificial space wherein youth are removed from their lived spaces. The school is simply a building, rather than an important part of the community, wherein students can take an active and engaged role. It is an artificial space, far removed from the necessary context for teachers to create political encounters. Ford (2013) extends his discussion by making an examination of Lefebvre's differentiation between to inhabit and habitat. Ford writes: “Public spaces tend to originate as planned habitats… Yet, as these spaces are occupied and lived in, they become inhabited and appropriated in varying ways… The space of educational encounter is produced through a deconstructive dialectic between habitation and inhabitation” (Ford, 2013: 308).

Lefebvre (1992/2004) actually provides us with the tools to understand the everyday life of rural youth, through rhythmanalysis. Educational encounters, political engagement, and community involvement are all part of the rhythms of everyday life in the school building. Using rhythmanalysis, it can be what is happening in a school, and what is being prevented from happening in a school.

Educational rhythmanalysis

Shortly before his death, Lefebvre (1992/2004) introduced the concept of rhythmanalysis, an underdeveloped theory, but one that can provide a tremendous wealth of knowledge in examination of everyday life, particularly for educators. Middleton describes the importance of Lefebvre's rhythmanalysis: “In educational institutions, imperatives of the conceived – deadlines, appraisals, national ‘standards’ – ‘colonise’ cyclic pulses of the lived” (Middleton, 2014: 14).

Christie explains the “the primary challenge in a Lefebvrian analysis is to apprehend and analyze the rhythms of multiple and complex social relations inherent in the production of space as continuous encounter” (Christie, 2013: 777). It is fairly clear at this point that Lefebvrian analysis is not an easy thing to do, as it calls for a multidimensional understanding of basically everything, with a focus more on the connections between elements than the elements themselves. In the case of rural schools, one must understand the relationship between urban and rural development, the history of land use, the history of schooling in the United States, education policy, and the underlying ideology of the policymakers. For Lefebvre, nothing existed in vacuum and no elements could be isolated if there is to be a true understanding. Lefebvre described the purpose of rhythmanalysis as an attempt “to found a new science” (Lefebvre, 1992/2004: 13), one that would take into account space, time, and all the intertwining elements that make up everyday life. Lefebvre's description of rhythmanalysis is abstract and complicated, but essentially requires the dual acts of “noticing” and “understanding” (Lefebvre, 1992/2004: 88). He explains “the rhythmanalyst will have some points in common with the psychoanalyst, though he differentiates himself from the latter… He will listen to the world… what are disdainfully called noises, which are disdainfully called noises, which are said without meaning, and to murmurs, full of meaning—and he will listen to silences” (Lefebvre, 1992/2004: 29). Christie describes a rhythmanalyst as needing to understand all the processes of spatial production and the “multiple logics of different rhythms within and beyond the moment” (Christie, 2013: 777). From a practical research standpoint, Christie writes that rhythmanalysis requires observation, interview, symbolic analysis, and most of all, entendre (listening). Christie continues to explain the importance of rhythmanalysis for education, starting with the issue that social inequality cannot be adequately explained through a simple spatial analysis, or sociological study. There must be a continuous “striving to understand the construction of inequalities, possible moments of fracture and possible pressure points for change. Using Lefebvre's terminology, it is to discern the ways in which rhythms of practice may be interrupted and counter or alternative rhythms established” (Christie, 2013: 778).

In order to understand these rhythms of practice, or propose alternative rhythms there must be a definitive understanding of social relations of production and how they are affecting spatial relations. These are played out in the everyday lives of students. Again using the consolidated school as an example, simply getting to school is a rhythm to be analyzed. For many students, this requires an extremely early start to the morning, as the bus ride itself can take an hour or more. They watch through the windows as the bus takes them far from their home community to a large, isolated building, where other buses from all over the region are bringing in other students. The school itself barely represents them or where they are from and stands as a symbol of large, abstracted space seeking to erase difference and homogenize the student population. Christie writes, “as spatial practices, the activities of schooling are enacted and experienced at the local level in the specific site of each school; they are simultaneously produced in the activities and representations of national policies, which themselves are part of global flows of ideas and images – a global imaginary of education policy, of comparative equivalence” (Christie, 2013: 778).

Rhythmanalysis can allow researchers to break down Ford's (2016) educational triad and understand what kind of education is truly present in a rural school. Are students only being allowed access to learning, wherein school is focused on the outcomes measurable by standardized testing? Are students able to engage with the official knowledge in the act of studying? What is the role of teachers in the school? What kind of education are teachers allowed to provide? Consolidation disrupts the everyday rhythms necessary for a student. Routine activities, such as getting to school or being able to take an active role are complicated or limited by excessive commuting times. Students are also removed from their everyday lives as regional schools take them far from their home communities thereby removing the possibility for encounters with anyone beyond the school population or outside of the abstracted space. Therefore, teaching and learning must be situated within the political economy of rural education. Rural youth must critically engage with the neoliberal influences on their school, questioning the logic behind why a small community school is considered to be ineffective, and why being moved to an abstract space is supposedly better. Through the use of the educational triad rural youth can critically analyze the way capital has abstracted their spaces as well as their ways of thinking. Through teaching and studying, rural educators and students can work together to devise a new kind of rural education that is independent of capitalist influence and truly embraces a democratic rural way of life.

Right to the rural

If educators are to redefine the possibilities of life for rural youth, it can be achieved through Lefebvre's notion of Right to the City, or in this case, a right to the rural. The right to the city, as described by Lefebvre (1996), requires a focus on broad societal needs, rather than on the individual. Lefebvre writes that the right to the city is as yet undefined, and requires defeating the dominant strategies and ideologies that shape urban life. For rural purposes, this would require defeating the ideologies of urbanization and capitalist accumulation. Oddly enough, right to the rural must overcome pieces of the right to the city as well, as Lefebvre wrote, “It does not matter whether the urban fabric encloses the countryside, as long as the urban (life) finds its realization” (Lefebvre, 1996: 158); future research and scholarship should be wary of the previous quotation, and understand a right to the city and right to the rural must recognize each other as disparate but also connected spaces; both of which must be allowed their realization without expense to the other. Lefebvre notes that the right to the city “meanders through nostalgia and tourism” (Lefebvre, 1996: 158) which also presents a danger for rural communities who can easily get caught up in the idyllic past rather than seeking to create a new kind of rural future.

Numerous researchers and scholars (Ford, 2013; Harvey, 2008, 2012; Merrifield, 2013, 2014; Stanek, 2011) have taken up the challenge of defining – or redefining – the right to the city. Harvey describes it as “an empty signifier full of immanent but not transcendent possibilities” (Harvey, 2012: 136) claiming that this right is only as revolutionary as those who take up the opportunity to define it. Harvey goes on to describe the right to the city as necessarily being a collective right, rather than a single worker's movement. It must encompass everyone or it falls apart. Harvey also distinguishes right to the city as being a right to “rebuild and re-create the city in a completely different image – one that eradicates poverty and inequality and that heals the wounds of environmental degradation” (Harvey, 2012: 138). This statement, modified for the country, can serve as the rallying cry for rural communities. How to claim the right to rebuild the community in a manner that takes control of the modes of production that for so long have defined rural areas as sites of destructive capitalist accumulation. Harvey (2008) has also warned of the need for right to the city to be a public movement. In many cities this right has fallen into the hands of private developers and billionaires that are leading to cities being shaped to serve financial interests through promotion as a location for high-end businesses and a travel destination for the wealthy. Harvey describes Manhattan as being “turned into one vast gated community for the rich” (Harvey, 2008: 38). Herein is another danger for rural communities as protection from capitalist accumulation does not mean they should be kept pristine in order to attract tourism, nor to attract the wealthy which would turn rural areas into isolated preserves for vacation homes. A right to the rural would need to foster a new everyday life, not create an abstraction of the mythical idyllic country town.

This need for everyday life rather than abstraction leads to another concept discussed by scholars, that of right to the city needing encounters in order to exist. Stanek describes that urban life “needs places of simultaneity, encounter; it is in these needs that ‘right to the city’ seeks legitimization” (Stanek, 2011: 162). It is only through a thriving, engaged community that the right to the city or right to the rural can have value. That is, the right can only exist when the possibility of encounter exists. Given this notion, Merrifield proposes the argument that right to the city “isn't the right right” (Merrifield, 2014: 529). He argues:

It's too vast because the scale of the city is out of reach for most people living at street level; and it's too narrow because when people do protest, when they do take to the streets en masse, their existential desires frequently reach out beyond the scale of the city, and revolve around a common and collective humanity, a pure democratic yearning. (Merrifield, 2014: 529)

Perhaps Merrifield (2014) is correct that right to the city is too vast and too vague to be properly articulated. He notes that Lefebvre would support the abandoning of a concept that would not work in reality, and instead suggests a politics of the encounter which can be more inclusive for city dwellers. However, because it may not fit the city, does not mean the idea of the right to the rural should be abandoned as well. While the latter half of Merrifield's critique that right to the city would reach beyond the scale of the city remains valid and can be extended to encompass a right to the rural, the former does not. Quite the contrary, an individual in a rural community can have a tremendous impact.

At this point, right to the rural must be defined, or at the very least, several questions must be posed which could serve to create an eventual definition, as this right would no doubt look very different depending on the community. Most notably, what is the rural that is being discussed? Is it any area that is not a city? Is the right to the rural a right to the periphery, to the spaces outside concentrated population centers? The answer to the latter question is based upon the first two. A right to the rural would allow for a right to define what the country is. A right to the rural would allow for rural communities, and make no mistake; it must be a communal and not an individual right, to exist outside of capitalist influences and to have control over the modes of production.

For rural schools, there does not need to be delineation between a right to the rural and politics of encounter. Ford (2013) describes the right to the city as a right to encounter, and specifically a right to the space of educational encounter. Briefly described, the encounter is exactly what it sounds like, all of the encounters that make up everyday life. This means understanding the lived realities of rural youth and encouraging youth to engage with their own realities in an education setting. By removing students physically from those realities, as previously discussed, it creates an abstract space wherein differences are eliminated in the name of standardization.

This is not to say that all is lost however, as even the physically decontextualized can still force encounters. For rural youth, a critical analysis of why their space has been decontextualized and why they are forced out of their spaces which neoliberalism has deemed unprofitable can offer tremendous educational opportunities. Corbett (2016) notes that this does not mean the creation of an insular education system, and a rural education that only focuses on the rural essentializes what rural life means and how it connects to the world. Corbett (2016) believes this would be just as problematic as the urban-centric standardized curriculum already in place. Instead, Corbett writes that “We need to support ways about teaching in rural contexts that are non-standard and that directly address persistent and pressing rural problems such as: population loss, resource industry restructuring, resource depletion, environmental and habitat degradation and land use policy, etc.” (Corbett, 2016: 147).

Merrifield uses Occupy Wall Street as a prime example of the power of encounter. He writes that numerous encounters have occurred within cities, and these are not necessarily about the city, or city life, but about democracy in general. He writes “The protest captured the popular imagination, not only of ordinary Americans but also of ordinary disaffected people worldwide” (Merrifield, 2013: 59). This same disaffection exists in rural areas and can be tapped into by education. Corbett describes the disaffection and anger growing in rural communities:

In my everyday life as a rural citizen living and working in places that are routinely positioned as dying, increasingly marginal and largely unimportant to the advance of modernity. This is particularly so if local citizens express resistance to invasive forms of development such as mining, mega-quarries and hydraulic fractionation. In rural communities in which I have worked, resistance and resentment are rife. (Corbett, 2016: 148)

These rural issues, such as environmental degradation caused by capitalist accumulation, and the increasing marginalization by an urban capitalist society can serve as a strong beginning to engage rural youth, even outside of their home spaces. Through the critical examination of rural issues, rural youth can define what the right to the rural means to them.

Towards a rural common school movement

De Lissovoy et al. (2014) call for a commoning of public education as a way to contest and ultimately eliminate the privatization movements in schools. They argue that schools are much more than privately held property, that they represent the collective totality of labor amongst faculty and staff. Taking this even further, schools represent the collective knowledge and everyday lives of teachers as well as students. A common school would not simply be a school funded by the public, but a school for the public that produces the knowledge necessary for the community. De Lissovoy et al. call for collective labor to serve the common benefit, and to that the common school can “enlarge the public” (De Lissovoy et al., 2014: 55). The common school can produce real, lived space to overcome the forces of abstraction and create what Lefebvre (1974/1991) termed differential space. Differential space is the response to abstract space; it resists the fragmentation of life and knowledge restoring unity to all the elements that make up everyday life. A school that focuses on collectivity of labor and knowledge would serve as the differential space to the abstract space created by corporatization that seeks to standardize, divide, and make quantitatively measurable. De Lissovoy et al. write that, “a new common school movement must be able to envision new forms of pedagogy and curriculum, both in school settings and in the context of struggles for democracy” (De Lissovoy et al., 2014: 68). This notion of creating a new pedagogy ties directly to the discussion of right to the rural. Creating a common school to serve democracy is a part of creating the future of rural communities and determining how best to shape and design both schools and communities to best serve the everyday lives of the people who inhabit them.

Conclusion

Across the country, there are examples of rural populations taking control of their lands and livelihoods. This is seen in places such as rural Oklahoma, where parents, students, and teachers successfully protested House Bill 2824 which would have forced schools that were not meeting certain standards to close down (Stewart, 2016); and Pennsylvania, where residents of Eldred Township (Harris, 2016) prevented Nestlé from building a water bottling plant: both of these examples show the power of rural communities when they are able to unite. These residents are fighting against the abstraction of their spaces whether they are cognizant of it or not. Herein is the true power of the common school, as it can take the potential power of rural communities and direct it in the proper way. In Eldred Township, the residents were fighting against a corporation taking their water, while in Oklahoma, teachers and parents were simply fighting to keep their schools open. Imagine what else could be possible if they were also armed with the full knowledge about the underlying ideologies and power structures that allow a corporation to try to take control of a population's water supply in the first place. This article is merely an introduction, a beginning to the understanding the role of rural education in society. Through the analysis of Lefebvre's theories, a much clearer picture emerges of how rural communities have become what they are, and how they have been abstracted by outside influences. Armed with this knowledge, we can begin to theorize and take appropriate action in reshaping rural education to overcome the abstractions and begin to produce differential rural spaces, shaped by those who inhabit them.