nities; Simonds claimed that his organization had helped elect almost 5,000
school board members between 1991 and 1993 and that it controlled 2,200
school boards nationwide -- a claim that was disputed by his opponents
( Shogren and Frantz 1993, p. A38). Although the media often are guilty of
"overspeak" in dealing with such matters, Shogren and Frantz may not have
been exaggerating when they wrote:

From San Diego County to New York City, the religious right has turned
the public schools into the primary battleground in a divisive conflict
over the most fundamental issues of national identity. At issue is nothing
less than what values should be taught to the next generation of Ameri-
cans. (p. A1)

"Schools have been an ideological battleground for decades, but there is
no precedent for the breadth of the religious right's current campaign,"
they added (p. A38). School board disputes involving the religious right
and their opponents most often centered on books, sex education, and
homosexuality -- anything in the curriculum that went beyond the basics or
seemed overconcerned with raising students' self-esteem or seemed to rep-
resent behavior modification.

Although gays and lesbians were involved in California's history text-
book protests in 1990 -- in fact, they were first on the signup sheets to speak
at public hearings -- their concerns were not taken seriously by state educa-
tion officials (see Chapter 3). If the religious right becomes more of a factor
in curriculum policymaking, sexual orientation and how to address it in the
public schools is likely to remain near the top of the issues agenda.

But the long-unresolved issues of racial hierarchy and the tantalizing
promise of developing a transformative multicultural history -- and the de-
bate over what it means to be American -- were raised most cogently in the
1990 California history textbook controversy, which set the stage and pre-
ceded magazine cover stories about the America debate in the national
media by almost a year. We turn our attention to the California controversy
in Chapter 3.

Alexander Lamar. 1992. "America 2000: One year later". America 2000, no. 23 (March
30): 1-3.

Appleby Joyce. 1992. "Recovering America's historic diversity: Beyond excep-
tionalism". Journal of American History 79 ( 2): 419-431.

Baldwin James. 1955. Notes of a native son. Boston: Beacon Press.

Banks, Sandy, and William Trombley. 1990, "New textbooks: Out with dull, in with
diverse". Los Angeles Times (October 12): pp. A1, 38.

Barringer Felicity B. 1990. "A land of immigrants gets uneasy about immigration".
New York Times (October 14): p. E4.

Becker Jules. 1991. The course of exclusion, 1882-1924date>: San Francisco newspaper cover-age of the Chinese and Japanese in the United States

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