To study the relationship between the school and the rural family, and particularly to establish reasons for student dropout, a questionnaire was administered in 1973 to 103 students who dropped out of school in 2 large rural towns in the Veneto, Italy. Responses indicated that about 60% of the adolescents left school to help out the family or because what the school taught was seen as not relevant or useful. Other causes of student dropout included: school difficulties, confirmed by grades repeated (35.6%); family authority and internal relationships (22.3%); peer group influence (17.5%); health reasons (12.6%); in-class teacher discrimination (11.2%); discrimination by classmates (9.7%); and difficulty in traveling the distance to school (9.7%). The fact that these clusters of causes added up to more than 100% indicated that the decision to drop out of school early was not the result of a single, clearly defined motivation. Early abandonment of obligatory schooling by rural (especially farm) children is proposed as an indicator of the non-existent relationship between the school and the rural world; to remedy the situation the complex farm and rural culture should be incorporated into the culture, teaching methods and content of the school. (CM)