"Admirably and provocatively, Petrzela draws multiple connections between subjects often treated separately: between bilingual education and sex education; between bilingual education, sex education, and the property tax revolt that began in California and swept through the nation; between cultural politics in the classroom and fiscal politics over school funding; and between educational history/historiography and political history/historiography."--History of Education Quarterly
"
Classroom Wars is an intelligent, compelling study that connects the seemingly distant policies of bilingual education and sex education to shed new light on political culture. It is an excellent history that ingeniously challenges interpretive narrowness and will be influential in several different historical fields."--
Journal of American History"Extensive accounts of two critical issues in California public education in the late 1960s and 1970s-sex and Spanish bilingual education--are thoroughly vetted in this book by Petrzela...Petrzela challenges dichotomies and examines paradoxes, contributing to an enlightening picture of a critical era in California public education...Recommended."--
CHOICE"In this carefully researched, empirically grounded, and elegantly written book, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela explores debates and politics of bilingual education and sex education in California at the origins of the 'culture wars.' She tells an engaging, accessible, and compelling history of these conflicts that has important implications for how we understand postwar American political culture and education, past and present. Scholars and students of education history, education policy, and postwar American politics and culture will want to read this book."--Tracy L. Steffes, School, author of
School, Society, and State: A New Education to Govern Modern America, 1890-1940 "What's the matter with Kansas--or with America--and its endless culture wars? According to a common liberal refrain, contemporary conservatives have invoked hot-button cultural issues to persuade Americans to vote against their own economic interests. But that claim is itself a liberal conceit, ignoring the many ways that the American Right wove cultural and economic grievances into a cohesive and enduring ideology. No matter which way your own politics lean, you won't be able to understand modern American conservatism without reading Natalia Mehlman Petrzela's brave and original book."--Jonathan Zimmerman, author of
Too Hot to Handle: A Global History of Sex Education "It represents a sound, if largely descriptive, contribution to the political history of education during this period."--
The Journal of Interdisciplinary History
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