Issues about the delimitation between rural and urban and its implications for education

Abstract

There is a long discussion in the literature, which involves several areas of knowledge, regarding the possibilities of delimitation between rural and urban territories; in fact, different countries use different rules for such delimitation. The aim of this article is to discuss some implications of this delimitation in the educational sphere. For this, we present the methodological procedures adopted, based on speculative research; we review the literature, presenting different ways of defining urban and rural territories and, with regard to education, we revise the specific legislation in force for rural education; we continue to present some specific cases of schools and municipalities in order to discuss the implications of these decisions in public policies and pedagogical actions. We conclude by indicating the need to rethink dichotomous and arbitrary strategies for delimiting urban and rural areas and the importance of proposing public policies that take the context into account more broadly.

Keywords

• education
• rural
• urban
• public policy
• pedagogical actions.