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What does a school mean in rural space? What happens when, despite the protests of a community, a school is closed? How does school closure uncover the cracks in the stories we tell about ourselves and our world? In “They Tore the Heart Out” Joshua Montgomery describes the impact of multiple rounds of school closure and school consolidation in the rural Wyoming community of Medicine Bow, reconstructing the story of the closure and the forces behind it through meeting minutes and other primary sources as well as interviews with past and present residents.
High schools in many small communities act as a surrogate identity and signifier of community success. The school building and the complex community it engenders play roles both prosaic, through school lunches, curriculum, and nurses, and productive, as an economic, political, social, and cultural engine. Montgomery illustrates the long-term impacts of school closure on Medicine Bow and tracks the existential tensions that persist to this day. The story that emerges exists in a rapidly changing cultural context that complicates not only the telling but also the interpreting. School closure, and its aftermath, forced community members to confront issues related to their ability to preserve and control their own destinies.
Told with a strong narrative flair that brings the story to life through dramatic events driven by colorful local characters, “They Tore the Heart Out” allows for a better understanding of the rural educational experience, leads to fundamental questions about who and what we are as a culture, and underscores the importance of maintaining rural space.
“This book is needed in the field. There is a lack of understanding of the heartbreak of losing a rural school and, even more, how that loss begins the loss of the community. There is a need for organizations and professional development to improve the well-being of schools in rural America. They do not have to be lost to [the] attitude that bigger is better.”
—Jeanne Surface, University of Nebraska Omaha
Joshua Montgomery is assistant professor of education at The Teachers College of Emporia State University, nestled in the Flint Hills of Kansas. He has also taught at the University of Wyoming and Northland College, a small ecological school on the shores of Lake Superior.