This paper argues for the need to better understand the role of mothers and schooling in shaping modern conservative cultural politics. Arguing that 1970s–1980s was a critical period for anti-progressive politics surrounding schooling, the paper examines the activism of Australian Christian morals campaigner Rona Joyner. Joyner’s successful provocation of a 1978 governmental ban on social science curriculum materials was a signal event in an international Anglophone reaction against what she and others theorised as dangerously permissive forces in public culture. Pitting ‘Christian’ parental authority against ‘humanist’ state overreach in relation to the upbringing of children, Joyner created a detailed vision of the cultural-moral corruption of schools and other social institutions. This paper demonstrates how Joyner represented her labour as a project of both public motherhood and grassroots community activism, and how activist women like Joyner were foundational to the growth of a new contemporary grassroots conservatism expressed as a popular politics of ‘the people’ against the state.

本文认为有必要更好地理解母亲和学校教育在塑造现代保守文化政治方面的作用。该论文认为 1970 年代至 1980 年代是围绕学校教育的反进步政治的关键时期，该论文考察了澳大利亚基督教道德活动家罗娜·乔伊纳 (Rona Joyner) 的激进主义。乔伊纳成功挑起 1978 年政府对社会科学课程材料的禁令，这是国际英语国家对她和其他人所认为的公共文化中危险的宽容力量的反应的一个标志性事件。乔伊纳将“基督教”的父母权威与“人文主义”的国家在抚养孩子方面的过分进行对抗，创造了一个关于学校和其他社会机构的文化道德腐败的详细愿景。