Trouble in Suburbia: Localism, Schools and Conflict in Postwar Johnson County, Kansas

Abstract

Suburban public schools have become the predominant form of American education in the past fifty years. As a number of commentators have noted, however, historians have devoted relatively little attention to the development of these educational systems. This is surprising, given the importance of schools in the development of many suburban communities, especially during the postwar era. Education became a critical element in suburban struggles to create distinctive local identities in the wake of metropolitan development and liberal reform. Neighborhood schools were sites of political conflict over these issues in Southern California and elsewhere, as suburbanites asserted their independence as property owners. Recent studies have documented how this contributed to a widespread “tax revolt” during the latter 1970s, and a sharp conservative turn in politics that accompanied it. Little has been written, however, about how the rise of such “localism” in suburban political culture affected the schools.