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"Max
Rafferty (1917-82), Conservative Educator and California State School
Superintendent During 1962-70," by Franklin and Betty J. Parker, 63
Heritage Loop, Crossville, Tn 38571-8270, E-mail:
bfparker@frontiernet.net
Rafferty, Maxwell Lewis, Jr. (born May 17, 1917; died June 13,
1982), educator, was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Maxwell
Lewis Rafferty, an Irish Roman Catholic store owner and auto plant
worker, and DeEtta Cox. In 1921 the family moved to Sioux City, Iowa,
and then, in 1931, to Los Angeles, California.
Young Max skipped
several grades and graduated at age sixteen from Beverly Hills High
School, California, where he was remembered for being studious, quick
witted, and much younger than his classmates.
Entering the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), he
majored in history, managed the football and rugby teams, was president
of Sigma Pi fraternity, joined the UCLA Americans (an anti-communist
athletic group opposed to leftist students), and received a B.A. in
1938.
He then enrolled in the UCLA School of Education to become a
teacher and later claimed to have reluctantly studied John Dewey's
educational philosophy in order to become certified. He taught English
and history and coached football at Trona High School, in Trona,
California, from 1940 to 1948, having been classified physically unfit
for the World War II draft because of flat feet.
He married a
schoolmate in 1940, was divorced in 1943, and married Frances Louella
Longman in 1944. They had three children. He earned an M.A. degree from
UCLA in 1949 and an Ed.D. degree from the University of Southern
California in 1955.
Asked later why he chose to be a teacher and school
administrator for twenty-one years in isolated southern California
desert towns, Rafferty replied that "they paid better salaries, and
advancement was more rapid." From Trona, California, where he had risen
to be vice principal, he became principal of the high school in Big
Bear, California, a resort town in the San Bernardino Mountains, from
1948 to 1951.
He was then school superintend at Saticoy, (1951-1955),
Needles (1955-1961), and La Canada, a prosperous northeast Los Angeles
suburb (1961-1962), all in California.
Max Rafferty's speeches to education groups and civic clubs as well as his articles (particularly in Phi Delta Kappan,
the journal of the education honor society) and books written during
these years expressed his contempt for progressive education and school
approaches that stressed "life adjustment."
He described leftist students of the 1950s and 1960s as
"booted, side-burned, ducktailed, unwashed, leather-jacketed slobs."
His impassioned speeches and writings soon won him admiration from the
John Birch Society and other right-wing groups, many of which had
growing memberships in California during these years.
His 1961 "Passing of the Patriot" speech to the La Canada
school board excoriated educators for having been "so busy educating
for 'life adjustment' that we forgot that the first duty of a nation's
schools is to preserve that nation."
That speech marked a turning point
in his career. Wide press coverage made Rafferty a hero of not only
political right wingers but also of those who yearned more generally
for a return to simple and manly virtues.
In 1962, backed by a coalition of conservative forces, Rafferty
won election as state superintendent of public instruction; he was
reelected in 1966. He feuded with the liberal state board of education,
especially over books that he wanted removed from school libraries and
as textbooks in school subjects.
But his conservative philosophy of education had little real
impact because of the checks and balances and local control built into
the California school system. His critics claimed that California's
schools were never as progressive as Rafferty claimed.
Encouraged by conservative Republicans, he ran for the U.S.
Senate in 1968, won the nomination over liberal-Republican California
Senator Thomas H. Kushell, but lost to Democrat Alan M. Cranston in the
general election. He also lost his third reelection bid in 1970 as
California's superintendent of public instruction to Wilson Riles, a
black educator whom he had appointed his deputy.
Having been rejected
in California, he left in 1971 to become dean of education at Troy
State University, in Troy, Alabama. He died following an automobile
accident.
Rafferty presaged the New Right's ascendancy to political power
through the Republican presidencies of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and
particularly Ronald Reagan. Many observers believed that Rafferty
preached a conservative gospel as a means of self-promotion, rather
than out of personal conviction. Despite his talent for invective,
opponents as well as allies found him likable and articulate.
References
Rafferty's best-known books are Suffer, Little Children (1962); What They Are Doing To Your Children (1964); Max Rafferty on Education (1968); and Classroom Countdown: Education at the Crossroads (1970).
For biographies, see Paul F. Cummins, Max Rafferty: A Study in Simplicity (1968), and Franklin Parker, "School Critic Max Rafferty (1917-1982) and the New Right," Review Journal of Philosophy & Social Science, 10, 2 (1985): 129-40.
Obituaries are in the New York Times, June 15, 1982; San Diego Union (Calif.), June 14, 1982; Oakland Tribune (Calif.), June 14 1982; Los Angeles Times (Calif.), June 14 1982; San Francisco Examiner (Calif.), June 15, 1982; and Birmingham News (Ala.) , June 16, 1982. End of Manuscript.
Send E-mail comments and corrections to bfparker@frontiernet.net
Addendum:
24 of Franklin and Betty J. Parker’s book titles are listed in:
http://www.library.vanderbilt.edu/peabody/about/alum6.html#P
For their writings in blog form, enter bfparker in google.com or in any other search engine.)
Franklin Parker's, George Peabody, A Biography.
Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, Feb. 1995, 278 pp., revised, 12
photos, is out of print, but most pages can be read freely as an E-book by
accessing:
http://books.google.com/ and typing in Source:
George Peabody, a Biography, by Franklin Parker.
1:45 AM
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