One century ago, a young educator named John T. Scopes found himself at the center of a legal battle in Dayton, Tennessee, for breaching a new state statute. This law prohibited teachers from rejecting the biblical account of human creation in favor of evolutionary theory, which suggests humans evolved from lower forms of life. This marked the beginning of a long history of religiously driven challenges to the inclusion of evolution in American public school curriculums, challenges that have persisted and evolved through various legal defeats.
Presently, more positive developments indicate a growing acceptance and integration of evolutionary theory in educational settings.
John T. Scopes was famously found guilty, though his conviction was later overturned on appeal. Despite this, the Butler Act under which he was tried remained effective, accompanied by similar statutes in Arkansas and Mississippi by the late 1920s. It wasn’t until 1967 that Tennessee repealed the Butler Act, prompted partly by the negative attention brought by the film “Inherit the Wind.” The following year, the Arkansas statute was declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in “Epperson v. Arkansas,” and Mississippi’s law was struck down in 1970 by that state’s supreme court.
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A subsequent resurgence of opposition to evolution education emerged, using tactics that did not seek to prohibit the teaching of evolution but aimed to dilute it by introducing “scientifically credible” yet religiously inspired alternatives such as biblical creationism, creation science, and intelligent design. However, these efforts were thwarted by a series of federal court rulings, culminating in the “Kitzmiller v. Dover” decision in 2005. This case ruled unconstitutional a Pennsylvania school district’s policy that required teachers to present intelligent design as a valid scientific alternative to evolution.
Anticipating the outcome of the “Kitzmiller” decision, the early 2000s saw a new tactic: not to ban or balance, but to subtly undermine the teaching of evolution by allowing or even mandating teachers to represent evolution as a scientifically debatable theory. Currently, states like Mississippi, Louisiana, and Tennessee have laws that permit such representations. The constitutionality of these laws is difficult to challenge without specific instances of teachers using these laws to promote anti-evolutionary teachings.
However, it is evident that the quality of evolution education in U.S. public schools is on the rise. A comparison of surveys from 2007 and 2019 of high school biology teachers shows an increase in both the general teaching of evolution and the specific teaching of human evolution, which is often seen as particularly controversial. By 2019, a significant 67 percent of these teachers emphasized the scientific validity of evolution without presenting creationism as a scientifically valid option.
This notable shift can be attributed to the enhanced focus on evolution in state science standards, influenced by a National Research Council framework that acknowledges evolution as a fundamental principle of life sciences and the diversity of life on Earth. This has created incentives for better equipping educators to teach evolution effectively.
Despite these advances, challenges remain. In the 2019 survey, 17.6 percent of biology teachers still inaccurately promoted creationism as scientifically valid. Many of these teachers personally held creationist beliefs, while others possibly succumbed to inadequate preparation or community pressures.
Recent legislative actions, such as a 2024 bill in West Virginia that initially included provisions for teaching intelligent design, highlight ongoing concerns about the integrity of evolution education. Although the explicit reference to intelligent design was removed, the shifting legal landscape poses new challenges to defending the teaching of evolution against religiously motivated interference.
Nevertheless, the trend seems to be toward a broader acceptance of evolution, both in public opinion and within traditionally resistant religious communities. More than a century after the Scopes trial, there’s a growing hope that all students in American public schools will eventually grasp that evolutionary theory is central to understanding biology.
Disclosure: The author of this article is the deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, which participated in the plaintiff’s legal team in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case in 2005 and co-conducted the 2019 science teacher survey with Eric Plutzer of Pennsylvania State University.
This article is an opinion and analysis piece, and the views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of Scientific American.
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Cameron Aldridge combines a scientific mind with a knack for storytelling. Passionate about discoveries and breakthroughs, Cameron unravels complex scientific advancements in a way that’s both informative and entertaining.