Max Rafferty

Family

Rafferty was born to Maxwell Rafferty Sr. (1886-1967), and the former DeEtta Frances Cox (c. 1892-1972) in New Orleans, Louisiana, one of two children. His younger sibling was actress and pin-up girl Frances Rafferty, a co-star of December Bride. Rafferty spent most of his childhood in Sioux City, Iowa, where his sister was born in 1922. The family relocated to California in 1931. In 1944, he married Frances Longman, and the couple had three children, Kathleen, Dennis, and Eileen.

Education

Rafferty graduated in 1933 from Beverly Hills High School in Beverly Hills. He earned his Bachelor of Arts (1938) and Master of Arts (1949) from the University of California, Los Angeles. He earned his and Ed.D. (1955) from the University of Southern California. While attending UCLA, he was a member, and president, of the Sigma Pi fraternity chapter.

As an undergraduate at UCLA, Rafferty "took umbrage at many of the things" in the college newspaper, the Daily Bruin, "particularly the editorial page ... to the point of charging into the office and physically attacking me", recalled editor Stanley Rubin in 1970.

In 1937, Rafferty wrote a letter to The Los Angeles Times in which he described The Bruin as "one of the most prejudiced newspapers on the Pacific Coast" and complained that the its "radicalism is not so funny if it keeps you from getting a job."

Career

Rafferty's first job, during World War II, was as a classroom teacher in the Trona Unified School District in the Mojave Desert portion of San Bernardino County, California. In his newspaper columns, Rafferty often remarked with nostalgia how his first teaching jobs in California had been the most satisfying ones of his career.

After World War II, Rafferty became vice-principal, principal, and school superintendent in various California school districts, including Big Bear High School in Big Bear Lake from 1948 to 1951. He was the superintendent at Saticoy (1951–1955), Needles (1955–1961), and La Cañada, a prosperous northeast Los Angeles suburb (1961–1962). In 1962, he was elected to the nonpartisan office of California education superintendent, defeating Los Angeles school board president Ralph Richardson. He held the office for two terms, from 1963-71.

In 1968, Rafferty challenged and defeated incumbent Republican Senator Thomas H. Kuchel in the Republican primary election in what has been described as "one of the biggest primary upsets in Senate history." Rafferty ran as a conservative while Kuchel was a moderate. Rafferty then lost the general election to Cranston, the former state controller.

Two years later, in 1970, Rafferty failed in his bid for a third term as Superintendent of Public Instruction, losing to Wilson Riles, the first African-American to be elected to statewide office in California and a Democrat in the nonpartisan race.

He then moved to Alabama to serve on the faculty at Troy University in Troy, serving as Dean of Education from 1971-81, and as Sorrell Chairman of Education from 1981 until his death in 1982. Shortly before his death, he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to a national advisory board on the financing of elementary and secondary education.

Rafferty was the author of several books on educational philosophy, including Practice and Trends in School Administration (1961), Suffer, Little Children (1962), What They Are Doing to Your Children (1964), and Max Rafferty on Education (1968). His newspaper column, "Dr. Max Rafferty," was syndicated nationally. He also received the George Washington Honor Medal from the Freedoms Foundation.

Views

Rafferty was described as an "outspoken antiprogressive educator" who "built a national reputation attacking busing, sex education and the 'New Left'". His books Suffer, Little Children and What They Are Doing to Your Children attacked progressive education and urged a "return to the fundamentals" in education. In particular, he wanted schools to focus on phonics, memorization, and drill; use American history and children's classics in teaching from the early grades forward; and drop psychology and "life adjustment" approaches from education. Among his controversial actions as school superintendent was his attempt to stop schools and classrooms from using books that he considered obscene, such as Eldridge Cleaver's Soul on Ice and Leroi Jones's Dutchman. He threatened to revoke the teaching certificate of any teacher who used such works. He even attempted to get the Dictionary of American Slang removed from school libraries.

Politically, he was known as an "articulate spokesman for the far right" who had a "nationwide reputation as a Fourth-of-July style orator and writer." In 1968, while running for the Senate, Rafferty said that those caught in looting should be shot.

He urged quick, stiff punishment for crimes: "Retribution is what I'm talking about, friends, and ever since we crawled out of caves, retribution has followed wrongdoing as the night does the day." He promised never to vote for higher taxes or for foreign aid to "dictators who hate us," and he criticized judges who "coddle criminals," saying he could not have voted to confirm any of the then Supreme Court Justices.

In 1972, he campaigned for and served as a stand-in speaker for Alabama Governor George Wallace during the latter's Democratic campaign for US President.

Death

Rafferty was active in the Lions Club and Rotary International. He died on June 13, 1982, at age 65 when his car plunged off an earthen dam into a pond near Troy, Alabama.

His papers were donated to the Special Collections Department of the University of Iowa Libraries in Iowa City.