Zimmerman, Jonathan. Whose America?: Culture Wars in the Public Schools . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005.

== Summary ==
This
book examines the various culture wars in the 20th century that have
shaped American schools. In each generation, such issues as religion and nation
– and race – have been addressed in different ways through the public school
curriculum and this book examines how a range of mostly unknown Americans struggled
over the curriculum. He argues that the culture wars –
beginning with the issues raised at Dayton (evolution and religion) and in
Chicago (patriotism and nationalism; Mayor Thompson and the history textbook) –
have taken to distinct, though at times intersecting, roads in American public
life (Dual Culture War Thesis). In
the case of the “Chicago” line, Zimmerman argues that there is one constant
theme: the progressive inclusion of more Americans in the grand-national story.
Each group could have a part in the story, as long as the larger themes of
freedom, equality, and opportunity were not questioned. In contrast, the
debates concerning religion and schools wasn’t as linear: for the three decades
after Scope, the accepted practice
was time release (for religious purposes), but by the 1960s the Supreme Court
prohibited any religious instruction, reigniting the debates and largely
becoming a conservative mantra. Again, in the 1980s, another turn, in which
conservatives demanded equal time and share of “Biblical” interpretations of
creation. Sex instruction also became a key topic of debate. While in the
“history” wars a rough consensus has emerged (a banal, triumph history), in the
battle over religion in schools, however, no such consensus has emerged.