Question

Problems faced by students in rural areas

Answer 1

The problems that are faced by students in rural areas is uncountable. Like the poor nutrition , poor medical facilities, less opportunities, etc.

Answer 2

Lack of reliable communication. Many of our students don’t have internet access at home, or reliable cell phone service. As a result, it’s very difficult to give the students homework, as many of them don’t have the ability to look up resources at home, post their work, or get into contact to get help.Divided time. Because many of our students live on farms, when they are not at school or in sports, many of them are doing chores around the house. This puts more strain on their time to do work outside of school.Lack of parental involvement: This may be just specific to our area, but there is a decided lack of focus on education, as many older people have the opinion of “I was fine with little school”, or “you learn everything you need to know by working on the farm”, so there is very little assistance from parents with anything school related that isn’t sports. There is also a low rate of students going to college, as many of the parents discourage higher education. There are also days where a student will get pulled out of school to go help on the farm in the middle of the day.Lack of resources: This is compounded by our state’s abysmal track record with education funding, but much of the resources of our school (books, supplies, etc) comes from the teachers. We can fill out a requisition form for many things, but more often than not it just sits in a stack and by the time it gets through it’s past when we needed whatever it was. It’s just easier to buy whatever ourselves.Religious restrictions: This, fortunately, isn’t such a big issue in our area, due to the libertarian bent of most of the families, but in some rural areas parents take issue with lessons conflicting with their religious beliefs. This is particularly problematic in science (evolution, climate change, etc.), and English (books, content lessons, etc.).Racism and homophobia: Rural areas tend to be dominated by white people, with some Latino students, depending on the farm community, but racism is pretty endemic. Most of my kids have never had a conversation with anyone of color. As a result, there is usually some resistance to any unit dealing with diversity (teaching To Kill a Mockingbird was interesting). Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that everyone in a rural area is racist, but many of our students’ only knowledge of minorities is what they see on tv.Poverty: This is probably the biggest obstacle. Some of our students live in homes with limited food, or only intermittent access to running water/ electricity. This comes with a whole host of challenges, not only in school work but also in limited ability to participate in extracurricular activities. Every year I have to purchase clothes for my Forensics students to compete in because many of them would simply be in jeans and a t-shirt.