But these alternatives were found to be unconstitutional at every turn. A Tennessee state law requiring textbooks to include biblical creationism was struck down in ; Arkansas and Louisiana state laws requiring balancing evolution with creation science were struck down in and ; and a Pennsylvania school district's policy requiring the presentation of intelligent design was struck down in Even before the legal defeat of intelligent design in Pennsylvania, evolution's opponents were already beginning to try yet a different tack: requiring, or more commonly allowing, science teachers to misrepresent evolution as scientifically controversial, often under the rubric of academic freedom.
More than 70 such bills have been introduced since , with three enacted, in Mississippi, Louisiana and Tennessee. It is unclear to what extent science teachers in those three states take advantage of those laws. But according to a national survey conducted in , about one in eight public high school biology teachers present creationism as scientifically credible in their classrooms, despite the unconstitutionality of the practice.
Scientific, educational and legal concerns are often overridden by personal or community attitudes of doubt and denial. Indeed, the same survey revealed that six in 10 of the instructors were teaching evolution less than forthrightly—compromising on the accuracy, completeness or rigor of their treatment, often for fear of provoking a creationist backlash. Such fears, sadly, appear to be warranted: more than one in five of the teachers reported experiencing community resistance to their teaching of evolution.
Fortunately, the treatment of evolution in state science standards is getting better on the whole, which means that textbooks, curricula and, ideally, teachers are following suit.
But scientific knowledge and pedagogical know-how are not the only equipment that educators need to teach evolution. They also need the confidence to persist, even in the face of doubt and denial. Creationists are as active as ever, with a few even in the bully pulpits afforded by high political office. And the legal rulings that established the obstacles that have so far thwarted attacks on evolution education could be overturned by a reactionary Supreme Court or circumvented by public support of religious schools not subject to constitutional strictures.
So the evolution wars are by no means over. Gary Scott's own service in the evolution wars was for just a brief skirmish: he was reinstated—with back pay—at Jacksboro High School even before the Butler Act was repealed.
He wasn't the last science teacher to play the role of hero in the contentious history of evolution education in the U. The Tennessee Supreme Court found the law forbidding the teaching of evolution to be constitutional.
In , the U. Supreme Court found a similar law in Arkansas to be a violation of the First Amendment. In this photo, evangelist T. Martin's books against the theory of evolution are sold in Dayton, Tennessee, at the Scopes trial. AP Photo, used with permission from the Associated Press. Mencken applied to the prosecution of a criminal action brought by the state of Tennessee against high school teacher John T. In the case Scopes v.
The case arose when, seeking to test the constitutional validity of the Butler Act, the American Civil Liberties Union ACLU placed advertisements in Tennessee newspapers offering to pay the expenses of any teacher willing to challenge the law.
George W. Scopes also taught math and general science, and, on occasion, substituted for the principal in biology. Among the many ironies at the Scopes trial, two surrounded the textbook at the center of the controversy. First, Tennessee mandated that George W. Yet Bryan volunteered to join the prosecution team because he opposed the theory of evolution for its association with eugenics and with social Darwinism.
Gorrell, Speaker of the Senate. Buford Ellington, Governor. From: Tennessee Evolution Statutes source. See also: 21 March - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of enactment of the Butler Act.
Nature bears long with those who wrong her. She is patient under abuse. But when abuse has gone too far, when the time of reckoning finally comes, she is equally slow to be appeased and to turn away her wrath.
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