ABSTRACT
Country music has a way of suggesting cultural themes in the mountains with a precision, clarity, and beauty virtually unattainable by any social scientist. Compare Whitley and Brooks' lyrics with the insight of Braxton County's vocational and adult education director regarding views on schooling at the county high school. Both Whitley, a native of rural eastern Kentucky who literally drank himself to death at the height of his career, and Braxton's vocational director speak about a world where physical work and clear differences in gender roles remain important. Formal schooling is increasingly touted as important because it has instrumental utility. Reorganizing public schools to make them more instrumental for creating good state and national citizens and workers is one of several reasons why almost all of the several dozen former rural schools in the Salt Lick District no longer exist.
