ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the importance of rural communities worldwide is going to increase over the next four decades. Population growth and an increasing preference for urban living linked with the challenges of food sovereignty, water supply, energy needs, environmental health and territorial security underpin this standpoint. A few observations on rurality and education in rural Australia and China follow to illustrate some of the diversity of understandings about them and to provide locational and contextual dimensions for the chapter. The concepts of strong choice and weak choice are then introduced and an amplification of Bernstein's message system theory about how schools realize their purposes. The chapter explains the theoretical considerations based on Corbett's research in a fishing community in Nova Scotia. It finally examines a brief case study from a rural community in South Australia to inform how strong choice learning may help to retain youth in rural areas and enhance the quality and diversity of education.
