Summarizing the findings of his study in southwestern Nova Scotia coastal fishing villages, Mike Corbett (2009), in his article "Rural Schooling in Mobile Modernity: Returning to the Places I've Been" lays out several arguments, including the following: First, that formal education "has been and continues to be...a key institution of "disembedding," loosening ties to particular locales and promoting out-migration from rural places". Second, the ambivalence about this process "is experienced in different ways by differently positioned social actors in the rural community". Following Corbett, in this commentary the author takes the opportunity to reflect on the implications of these arguments for rural people, rural communities, and rural schools in the context of the U.S. Southwest, in New Mexico.