From Draft NOtices, January-March 2025
Book review: They Came for the Schools: One Town’s Fight Over Race and Identity, and the New War for America’s Classrooms.
— Isidro Ortiz, PhD
Written by acclaimed investigative journalist Mike Hixenbaugh, this book is worth an earnest read because of its focus, timeliness and documentation. It will be of interest to a diverse audience, especially those concerned with public schools and their roles and impact on youth development in society, and how elements of the Right have managed to achieve political power.
COMD, Project YANO and other organizations engaged in counter-recruitment and anti-militarism work have long recognized public schools as sites of ideological and political contestation. Fueled by this understanding, they have struggled to influence policies and practices like the involuntary placement of students in JROTC. Regrettably, as this book makes clear, they have not been the only ones to recognize the role of schools in shaping the country’s political climate.
In a clearly written exposé that draws from interviews and secondary sources such as school district records, Hixenbaugh chronicles the recent rise of a Christian conservative campaign that targets education policy. He tells how this movement is not just an attempt to convert public schools into private institutions but encompasses a powerful drive involving the imposition of Biblical values in schools, the banning of books, the redesign of curricula and the limiting of the rights of students of color and LGBTQ students. To his credit, he does so with clear investment in the outcomes of this campaign, searching for glimmers of hope that resistance to the movement will spread and succeed.
Hixenbaugh focuses on a political context created by the rise of Donald Trump, the Covid-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter developments. Trumpian rhetoric and fear-mongering about an alleged Antifa attack on suburban communities catalyzed a relentless and ongoing reactionary movement of Christian parents that has become endemic across the United States.
But the primary focus of his investigation is on the epicenter of this movement: the suburban community of Southlake, Texas, a community with a recognized first-rate school district whose governing board was committed to fostering diversity and inclusion. In 2019 and 2020, there were the first manifestations of a reactionary campaign, which involved parental complaints against the use of allegedly anti-biblical textbooks and protests against the school district’s diversity plan. But, as Hixenbaugh details, the conservative backlash quickly mushroomed into the “building of an army” and “launching of a political war” by Christian parents turned political activists. In 2021 those initiatives concluded in conservatives winning control of the school district primarily via the intentional and systematic use of a well-funded “playbook.”
In chapters 9 and 10 his book, Hixenbaugh describes the elements of the conservative strategy. His discussion makes clear that the strategy was sophisticated and overpowering in 2021. Moreover, the victory in Southlake inspired similar takeovers in adjacent north Texas districts. But, as he reveals, the victors did not anticipate the unfavorable attention that the district would attract or that opposition would arise in Southlake and elsewhere It came from the ranks of teachers, parents and students and progressives who refused to be complicit in the implementation of the conservatives’ agenda. In 2023, the strategic mobilization of coalitional opposition in the community of Round Rock, Texas, resulted in the defeat of conservative forces striving to win control of the school board.
For Hixenbaugh the progressive victory in Round Rock demonstrates that the conservative movement is not indomitable and that such victories could be replicated elsewhere. As he writes: “Round Rock showed that when progressives and moderate parents organized, they could win, maybe not in overwhelming conservative towns like Southlake, but in lots of suburbs across the country.” He is inspired by the victory and the continuing opposition in areas where conservatives achieved control of their school districts. In one district, the “tumult overtaking school boards also seemed to awaken an entire generation of young people.” For Hixenbaugh this development is significant given that the youth are the future of that community and the country.
I too am inspired by this victory, a victory which reminds us that resistance is not futile, and that organization remains critical in Texas and beyond. Hixenbaugh’s blow by blow documentation also shows that lying, fear mongering, misinformation, claims of indoctrination through alleged teaching of critical race theory, and many other disgusting but effective tactics will be mobilized as part of the conservative strategy. It also should serve as a reminder that for conservative activists the battle over the schools is a zero-sum game. Progressive activists must be prepared to engage in such a contest.
Hixenbaugh does not discuss how militarism and military recruitment may fare in school districts where conservative forces become hegemonic. It is not unrealistic to assume that both would find (and are finding) fertile ground in such districts. [For more on this topic, see http://www.savecivilianeducation.org/.]
Hixenbaugh’s book can be read on its own. However, for those seeking broader understanding of how conservative forces have become ascendant, this text could be fruitfully paired with White Rage: the Outspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide by Carol Anderson and Resistance from the Right: Conservatives and the Campus Wars by Lauren Lassabe Shepherd.
This article is from Draft NOtices, the newsletter of the Committee Opposed to Militarism and the Draft (http://www.comdsd.org/).
