Revisiting the rightward turn: Max Rafferty, education, and modern American politics

Max Rafferty is best remembered as a larger-than-life traditionalist who boasted of "killing progressive education in California." Though rarely attracting sustained scholarly attention, the twice-elected state superintendent (1962-71) and bestselling author often serves as a symbol of the conservative populism that germinated in the Golden State and then nationally in the late twentieth century. This article challenges the "Rise of the Right" narrative, employing Rafferty's career as a lens through which to understand the political and cultural transformations wrought by the late 1960s, and how educational questions - particularly those negotiated in K-12 schoolhouses, and specifically bilingual and sex education - were crucial to these shifts.