Willing Warriors

Name: Willing Warriors
Price: 39.95 AUD
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ISBN: 9780226833132

A New History of the Education Culture Wars

Mark Hlavacik

$39.95

Hardback

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English

University of Chicago Press
15 January 2026

History of the Americas; 20th century history: c 1900 to c 2000; Philosophy & theory of education

How the rise of the culture wars afflicts the politics of education.

On August 9, 2022, the Denton Independent School District held a meeting to address complaints about its libraries. Like so many districts in Texas and across the country, Denton had been responding to accusations that children had access to inappropriate books at school. During the public comment session, a local man stood up to the podium and read a sexually explicit passage from a book that he wanted removed from Denton's school libraries. But beguiled by the prospect of securing a political win, he had confused the title of the lurid psychological thriller he read aloud with a young adult fiction series about mermaids. While his attempt to ban a book that was never in Denton's school libraries in the first place received a few laughs, it also reflects a deeply serious and troubling culture of conflict that has taken over the politics of education and now divides people so completely as to make public education as a shared endeavor seem impossible.

In Willing Warriors, Mark Hlavacik shows how the culture wars have redefined the politics of US schooling from the 1970s to the present through vivid accounts of public controversies featuring Allan Bloom, Oprah Winfrey, Lynne Cheney, Rush Limbaugh, Betsy DeVos, Nikole Hannah-Jones, and others. Beginning in the 1970s, Hlavacik shows, efforts at innovation in schooling have increasingly been met by attempts to discredit them through exposé. As the culture wars have accelerated and exploded, this cycle of innovation and exposé has embroiled public schools in increasingly heated debates. He explains the dynamics that make curriculum controversies so intractable and confronts the delicate question of whether raucous public arguments are bad for education.

With clarity and insight, Hlavacik reveals why bitter contests between educational ideologies not only add another burden for the schools, but also for the people—the willing warriors—who devote their lives to fighting for their betterment.

By: Mark Hlavacik
Imprint: University of Chicago Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 140mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 399g
ISBN: 9780226833132
ISBN 10: 0226833135
Pages: 224
Publication Date: 15 January 2026
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Mark Hlavacik is assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Assigning Blame: The Rhetoric of Education Reform.

Reviews for Willing Warriors: A New History of the Education Culture Wars

""With a refreshingly balanced perspective, Mark Hlavacik guides us through fifty years of political showdowns, explaining why Americans are willing to fight for their schools but also helping us navigate through the ‘fog' of pettiness and polarization.” -- Campbell F. Scribner, author of 'A is for Arson: A History of Vandalism in American Education'