Rural Education: A Proud Heritage & a Bright Future. Proceedings of the Annual Rural and Small Schools Conference (8th, Manhattan, Kansas, October 27-28, 1986).

This collection of 5 major papers and 32 abstracts covers a range of issues surrounding rural education. In the first paper, Glen Shaw, a rural Minnesota schools administrator, contends economic and technological changes have threatened rural jobs and the rural way of life. Anecdotes and statistics are employed to define rural problems and to urge educators to participate in government policy development. Next, June Gabler, representative from the American Association of School Administrators discusses public relations and offers management tips for rural school administrators. Following this, Jon Wefald, President of Kansas State University, discusses the historical contributions of rural America, emphasizing values of equality, private enterprise, decentralization, agriculture, and the potential for economic and educational development in Kansas. Next, Tom Hansen, of the Boeing Military Airplane Company, discusses socioeconomic trends in Kansas and the nation. He emphasizes the importance of linkages between educators and business, suggesting that they have many areas of mutual interest. The last paper, by Roy Forbes, director of the Rural Education Institute in North Carolina, discusses the ways technology has changed rural communities and the world marketplace and stresses the importance of combining existing rural strengths with new technology to foster a developmental "restructuring" of rural areas. Topics of the abstracts, which are arranged alphabetically by title, include: school athletics, drugs and alcohol, assessing educational quality, career ladders, school administration issues, recruiting teachers, rural teacher education programs, an assessment of North Dakota's public attitudes toward education, sex education, rural enrollment trends, partnerships in education, and the need for educational equality between the sexes. (TES)