Mark Hlavacik's "Willing Warriors"

Mark Hlavacik is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism and Texas A&M University.

He studies controversies about education and education about controversies using historical, rhetorical, and qualitative research methods.

Hlavacik applied the "Page 99 Test" to his new book, Willing Warriors: A New History of the Education Culture Wars, with the following results:

Page 99 of Willing Warriors contains some exposition about how the Common Core State Standards were developed to address the shortcomings of the standardized testing regime imposed under No Child Left Behind. It is important information for understanding that chapter, but not the most thrilling page in my book. So, in lieu of page 99, I’d like to suggest a few other pages that will give prospective readers a better sense of what’s in my book.

Page 2 tells the story of a suburban man who tried to ban an erotic thriller from a school library. It turned out that the library did not have the book, which made his decision to read a sexually explicit passage from it aloud at a schoolboard meeting kind of awkward.

Page 22 recounts the gruesome details of a hunting documentary that was shown to 10-year-olds, including the successful spearing, drowning, and dismemberment of a mother caribou and her calf.

Page 58 begins an analysis of Allan Bloom’s appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 1988. The episode was titled “How Dumb Are We?” and rather than Pontiac G6 sedans, the studio audience was given the opportunity to answer for their ignorance of basic history and science on national television.

Page 75 includes excerpts from a memo written by a research assistant who was working for the Chair of the NEH, Lynne Cheney. The RA had been attending academic conferences and reporting what she saw to Cheney. At the College Art Association’s annual convention in 1992, she saw 15ft projection of “women’s genitalia” which had been “lifted from porn magazines.”

On page 114, David Barton worries aloud on The Glenn Beck Program that the Common Core will make cursive “a language as foreign to students as hieroglyphics.” Cursive is not a language.

Finally, on page 158, you get to find out what happened to the guy from page 2.

Visit Mark Hlavacik's website.

--Marshal Zeringue