In the last 20 years, progress has been evident in the increase of enrollment in all stages of education in Asia. Tremendous efforts have been made to provide primary education for the remotest villages in the Asian communities. However, the concept that primary education is a means for fulfilling the obligations of human rights and for making rural children literate is not adequate. In the 1970s, a different approach must be implemented in rural education. New innovations in curriculum organization; provision of modern equipment and materials, better textbooks, and instructional teaching aids; more creative methods of teaching; preparation of better teachers; and more efficient school supervision and administration are envisaged to be given more consideration in primary education in rural communities. The following basic concepts should be treated as directives in creating a ruralized curriculum: (1) self-realization in the rural community, (2) economic awareness of the rural community, (3) social and cultural cognizance of the rural community life, and (4) civic responsibility toward the rural community. The rural communities will be the backbone of economic development in Asian countries for decades to come. Education can contribute to the needed rural reform and community development. (FF)