"Too Many Undisciplined Brains"

Max Rafferty, who calls himself a "conservative revolutionist," had hardly been sworn in last week as California's superintendent of public instruction when he let go with a bracing blast at the "pablumized" progressive education that he says afflicts California. If he has his way, Rafferty will bring about "nothing less than the philosophical-educational reorientation of the greatest state in the union."

Says Rafferty: "California leads in school buildings, supplies, equipment, number of years of training for teachers, psychology and methodology and in salary scale. But in the area of subject-matter achievement of its young people, we are not the top state by any means." His manifesto: "The schools exist to teach organized and disciplined subjects. There are too many undisciplined brains running around the world today."

Love of Country. "Knowledge is the only thing that stands between national survival and destruction." says Rafferty. He particularly singled out the non-textbooks put out by publishers who for years have been "brainwashed by curriculum experts and school superintendents." Rafferty's prescription:

"We need to get more glamour and suspense back in the readers. The kids are tough little creatures. They learn to read, not because their parents or teachers want them to, but because they are interested enough to go on to the next page. They used to read excitedly about Hansel and Gretel pushing their grandma into the oven,* but the kids didn't go around afterward pushing their own grandmothers into the oven.

"I can't recommend a single fifth-grade American history text. They talk of the wives of pioneers making linsey-woolsey dresses and men chopping down trees, but they omit things like the Monroe Doctrine. They are not subversive but childish. A fifth-grader deserves something better. I want elementary schoolchildren taught love of country at an early age. I make no bones about this. If this is indoctrination, I don't understand the meaning of the word. It's just common sense. There isn't any need for flag waving or emotionalism. All we need to do is teach the facts compellingly and interestingly, and we'll get good, dedicated citizens. We've done it in the past. We can do it again."

The Teacher-Parent Split. Such impassioned prose got Republican Rafferty, a former rural school superintendent and father of three, elected to his nonpartisan post last November in a landslide victory for which California's standpat educators had a big share of the blame. "There is a great difference between leaders of my profession and parents." says Rafferty. "My job is to keep this rift from growing larger."

His success depends in part on Governor Pat Brown who appoints the state board of education, nine of whose ten members opposed Rafferty's election. Rafferty's job is mainly to carry out Brown's and the board's policies. Last week, as a starter, he happily backed Brown's idea for a youth conservation corps to get bad boys out of the classrooms and into the fields for hard work.

But the job also gives Rafferty a platform for his eloquence, and he obviously intends to let the vested interests of education feel the full sting of it.

*Actually, it was the wicked witch, and Gretel did it all alone.

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