ABSTRACT
The school is in a rural area. The village in which it is located is slowly becoming a dormitory settlement, if not a town, to serve a medium-sized market town some five miles away. The school, a mixed secondary modern with nearly 600 pupils, is sited within one of the new estate developments. What has been said so far suggests something of an urban or semi-urban orientation: what is missing from the impression being built up is a sense of the rural setting and relative isolation. Some of the pupils obviously come from the village; yet a large number live on farms remote from each other. The area is not one crossed by arterial routes between other parts of the country. Traditions and habits change less quickly here than in the cities. Many pupils may have little contact with each other outside the school. The school bus collects them at certain points in the morning and deposits them back there at night. Holidays may be spent working on the farm from which they come. Many of the pupils have never visited London or any other large city. The life of many is relatively self-contained and well-ordered. The expectation will be that as adults a high proportion will work in this, their native area for the most part. Some are likely to migrate from the area in order to seek job opportunities. The school and the area therefore possess certain peculiarities which need to receive our attention. The pupils are unlikely to have had much contact with foreigners, whether whites or coloured. There is in fact one coloured pupil at the school. It takes a long time for any stranger entering the area to be viewed as one of the community. The remoteness, then, has implications in terms of teaching about race relations. There may be both advantages and disadvantages to consider.
