In the Press

What began as a debate over condoms and schoolchildren soon erupted into a full-scale battle about the purpose, cost, and place of public education.

In the April 1994 issue of Harper's, the writer Anthony Giardina travels among cornfields and tobacco barns to witness "something akin to a war,'' as the small town of Hatfield, Mass., rises up to fight over the future of its children's schooling.

The school committee had voted in 1992 to make condoms available on demand to all...