Lucky or Deliberate?
Am I lucky, or did I earn this? I work from a rural setting, enjoying a bald eagle who lands outside my window, on the tree where my hammock hangs (really!). During the day I “visit” and talk with people all over the world. I pry into their brains through their blogs and watch over their students’ shoulders through their online projects. I wonder sometimes how this happened. Scott McLeod writes of Dr. Richard Florida’s view of the world as “spiky,” not flat. The spikes are the few global, creative centers that suck in great minds of innovation and productivity. If that is the case (and I’ll have to read Florida’s book to decide what I think), I am not sure how I ended up being networked into a spike from my rural location, but I am. I hope I qualify as one of the creative ones, anyway.
Florida reportedly maintains that choosing one’s location is key to success. Scott wonders aloud about the role of rural schools in this scenario. I guess I may have been lucky, or perhaps somewhat deliberate and definitely timely, in landing where I have. I am living proof that
Anyone, anywhere can be a “resident” of such a creative megalopolis[a spike], though making the initial contact may be the biggest challenge. If the rural schools can share the vision of an extended “reach” of these “centers,” the local economy can still survive. (from my comment to Scott)
I do believe that any school can help students build a vision and a sensitivity to opportunity so he/she may be able to live in a vast “valley” but have connection to and gain benefits from physically-distant “spikes.” I don’t think we need to live in the spikes to be able to draw the economic benefits of them back into our geographic communities.
I still don’t know exactly how I came to be so fortunate. Mostly it was a confluence of circumstance. But whatever the cause of my situation, I think it is a scenario that is more and more possible for rural kids, assuming someone shares the vision.
