Waiting for Superman-

I finally saw the movie on DVD this evening and was very disappointed that they neglected to discuss rural schools completely. I don't know what to make of that. People are so fixated on inner-city problems they can't see beyond the city limits to see the thousands of poor rural kids with really no opportunities.
I do not mean to dismiss the challenges of inner city schools. I know that the schools in certain neighborhoods have a concentration of misery that rural schools do not have. But cities have benefits and opportunities that rural locations just do not have.
On trip to Chicago, we were able to visit the zoo and the Art institute without paying admission. Had we been there longer, we could have taken advantage of other "free days" from other museums and centers ( not to mention all the free concerts and cultural events held around the city and not even touching the free events at the universities.)
I don't understand why parents in the inner city do not take advantage of the educational opportunities around them, even if their schools do not. It's appalling to me that the city that has the most free educational opportunities have the worst education system and that no one seems to take it upon themselves to educate their own children, using the Smithsonian museums.
But no one seems to be talking about the rural situation. Yes, a rural school has children with a bit wider diversity of economic opportunities and perhaps parents with a wider diversity of expectations. But not that wide. The rural poor are stuck in the same economic cycle the inner city is. The rural poor deal with the same drug issues, and crime issues... most of the misery of childhood is not linked with location as much as economic situations and, in this way, there's no difference between rural poor and inner city poor.
Rural means that there is no museum around the corner, certainly no world class museum, no cultural opportunities, no free concerts and cultural events, nothing but nature and somehow, people think that's ok.
Rural schools are struggling to provide and education with very little money, and second hand exposure to the world at large. If a rural school is failing, there's no alternatives, no choice to get a better education somewhere else. If the school my kids attend was failing, I have no other school to send them to, public or private. It doesn't exist here. One school system in the entire area and this is not unusual in rural areas. Where's our choice?