An Educational Election

While swamping Richard Nixon in the California election last week, Governor Pat Brown saw another Democrat get licked in an equally fascinating fight for the nominally nonpolitical job of state superintendent of public instruction. The winner was a formidable, get-back-to-fundamentals conservative: zesty Max Rafferty, 46, onetime superintendent of schools in a Los Angeles suburb, whose recent book, Suffer, Little Children, argues in rococo prose that progressive education has led to "slobbism," and who calls for a spartan return to ''sweat, service and sacrifice.''

The job Rafferty won is a kind of organizational short circuit. California's state board of education, which sets policy, is appointed by the Governor. The state superintendent, who carries out board policy, is elected. Historically, the superintendent has been a dutiful administrator, but the setup also allows him to reflect popular feelings about education. Californians are unhappy about their schools' real or imagined proneness to progressivism, and the election was a chance to air the issues.

The liberal candidate for superintendent was Ralph Richardson, 44, a U.C.L.A. English professor and president of the Los Angeles school board, who argued for lively innovations in schools, such as teaching machines and team teaching. Richardson described Rafferty as having "one of the finest minds of the twelfth century,'' snapped that Rafferty was running against "the ghost of John Dewey" rather than discussing current realities.

In 47 finger-waving debates Rafferty successfully fended off Richardson's charge that he was more interested in indoctrination than education. He flooded the state with RAFFERTY-adorned boys' T shirts, plastered bumpers and billboards with stickers blazing his symbols, a little red schoolhouse and an apple for teacher. He won by 237,834 votes, began setting up a committee to study the efficiency of his domain, the 2,700-employee state department of education.

In practice, Rafferty's influence will be limited by the powerlessness of his job. The state board of education, which now has to work through Superintendent Rafferty for the next four years, was stunned by his election: nine of its ten members had publicly endorsed Richardson. But the board certainly knew that the people wanted some changes made.

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