Chronology
The Evolution of Evolution in the Schools
1858. On July 1st, the theory of evolution is announced to attendees at a meeting of the Linnaean Society in London. The theory is presented in a paper by Charles Darwin and Allfred Russell Wallace. Charles Darwin did not come up with the idea of evolution; he was merely the first to come up with an explanation for how evolution worked. Darwin came up with the idea of Natural Selection - the idea that the environment an organism resides in helps to determine which organisms outlive and produce young, and those who do not eventually die out.
1859. Origin of Species by Natural Selection by Charles Darwin is published in London.
1860. The first celebrated debate on the evolution-creationism controversy takes place at a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Oxford. Thomas H. Huxley, an outspoken champion of Darwin's ideas, and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce offer opposing views as to whether man and ape have a common ancestor.
1870s. Colleges begin revising their curricula to purge religious influences.
1871. Charles Darwin publishes his second work on evolution,The Descent of Man, which explicitly makes connections between apes and humans. (See "What is Evolution" in the article "The Evolution of Creationism" for an explanation of evolution - http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/12_02/create.shtml
1900. High schools begin revising their curricula to purge religious influences.
1916. James H. Leuba publishes The Belief in God and Immortality which highlighted survey results conducted in 1914 of religious beliefs of college students and prominent scientists. William Jennings Bryan will later use Leuba's survey to support his belief that evolution presents a serious threat to religious beliefs.
1919. George W. Hunter publishes Civic Biology - a textbook designed for high school biology students - which contains a section on evolution. It includes racist suggestions and endorses controversial ideas, such as sterilization of epileptics and the mentally feeble, from the then-popular field of eugenics. The book will be adopted by Tennessee and assigned as reading in John Scopes' classroom.
1922. William Jennings Bryan and other religious leaders begin a campaign for legislation that will ban the teaching of evolution in public schools. This marks the beginning of the battle to teach creationism in the classroom. (See "What Creationists Believe" in the article, "The Evolution of Creationism" for an explanation of creationism - http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/12_02/create.shtml )
1925. In January, John Butler introduces a bill in the Tennessee House of Representatives to ban the teaching of evolution in the public schools. The bill later becomes the Butler Act and will be the basis for prosecuting John Scopes. On March 21st, the Governor of Texas signs the Butler Act. He expresses the opinion that the law will never be enforced.
1925. The Tennessee v. John Scopes case, the Scopes Trial begins after Scopes is arrested, the World Christian Fundamentalist Organization hires William Jennings Bryan to prosecute the case, and the American Civil Liberties Union engages Clarence Darrow to defend Scopes. Some contemporaries and historians argue that the trial is in many senses, a refighting of the Civil War.
1934. James H. Leuba repeats his survey of 1914 and publishes the results in Harper's Magazine.
1957. After the Russians launched Sputnik in 1957, the National Science Foundation was created to advance scientific education in America to correct the perceived inferiority of American students as compared to Russian students. As part of this movement, the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study placed evolution in a prominent role of biology instruction, and so evolution became widespread in textbooks. The National Academy of the Sciences concluded that there was absolutely no scientific basis for creationist beliefs.
1960. A fictionalized film of the Scopes Trial is released. Inherit the Wind premiers in Dayton, Tennessee - with John Scopes returning to the town for the first time in 35 years. While the movie receives mixed reviews for its portrayal of the town residents and historical accuracy, it includes some verbatim arguments from the court transcripts.
1967. Tennessee's legislature repealed the Butler Act.
1968. The U.S. Supreme Court rules in Epperson v. Arkansas that Arkansas's law prohibiting the teaching of evolution violated the First Amendment. The Court held that the Establishment Clause prohibits the state from advancing or "furthering" any religion, and determined that the Arkansas law - which allowed the teaching of creation while disallowing the teaching of evolution - advanced a religion, and was therefore in violation of the 1st amendment. Instead of prohibiting laws that established a state religion, the Establishment Clause was interpreted to prohibit laws that "furthered" religion. In reaction to the Epperson case, proponents of creation in Louisiana passed a law requiring that public schools should give "equal time" to non-evolutionary theories of origin.
1981. In Segraves v. State of California, the U.S. Supreme Court rejects a California creationist's claim that classroom discussions of evolution infringed on his right, and the rights of his children, to free exercise of religion.
1982. In McLean v. Arkansas Board of Education, a federal court held that a "balanced treatment" statute violated the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The Arkansas statute required public schools to give balanced treatment to "creation-science" and "evolution-science." In a decision that gave a detailed definition of the term "science," the court declared that "creation science" is not in fact a science. The court also found that the statute did not have a secular purpose, noting that the statute used language peculiar to creationist literature in emphasizing origins of life as an aspect of the theory of evolution. While the subject of life's origins is within the province of biology, the scientific community does not consider the subject as part of evolutionary theory, which assumes the existence of life and is directed to an explanation of how life evolved after it originated. The theory of evolution does not pre-suppose either the absence or the presence of a creator.
1987. The Supreme Court rules in Edwards v. Aguillard that the Louisiana statute, which required creation to be taught alongside evolution every time evolution was taught, was unconstitutional. The Court held that the law was not adopted with a secular purpose, because its purported purpose of "protecting academic freedom" was not furthered by limiting the freedom of teachers to teach what they thought appropriate; ruled that the act was discriminatory because it provided certain resources and guarantees to "creation scientists" which were not provided to those who taught evolution; and ruled that the law was intended to advance a particular religion because several state senators that had supported the bill stated that their support for the bill stemmed from their religious beliefs.
The holding, however, did not state that it was unconstitutional to teach creation science in schools. While the Court held that that particular statute was unconstitutional because it was specifically intended to advance a particular religious belief, the Court did not hold that creationistic theories of origins were, of necessity, inherently religious, and therefore inherently unconstitutional to teach in schools. On the contrary, the Court explicitly contemplated that teachers were permitted to teach a variety of theories regarding human origins, so long as they had scientific merit, and were being advanced with the secular intent of advancing scientific education. Thus, if creationism was shown to have scientific merit, it could be taught for the secular purpose of improved scientific education without violating the Constitution.1990s. Responding to the legal requirement that theories of origins taught in school must have a scientific basis and secular purpose, some creationists begin the intelligent design (ID) movement. ID asserts that there is evidence that life was created by an intelligent designer. They do not use theological arguments, leaving the identity of the designer as an open question, and thereby seeking to be religiously. The majority of the scientific community, who see intelligent design as a form of pseudoscience and creationism, sees intelligent design as a "wedge" to enable creationist theories to be taught in schools in a secular manner. ID asserts that religious neutrality requires that students be provided with both evolutionary and ID theories of origins. (For a report of both sides of the debate, see http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/nhmag.html.)
1990. In Webster v. New Lennox School District, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rules that a school district may prohibit a teacher from teaching creation science in fulfilling its responsibility to ensure that the First Amendment's establishment clause is not violated, and religious beliefs are not injected into the public school curriculum. The court upheld a district court finding that the school district had not violated Webster's free speech rights when it prohibited him from teaching "creation science," since it is a form of religious advocacy.
1994. In Peloza v. Capistrano Unified School District, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholds a district court finding that a teacher's First Amendment right to free exercise of religion is not violated by a school district's requirement that evolution be taught in biology classes. Rejecting plaintiff Peloza's definition of a "religion" of "evolutionism," the Court found that the district had simply and appropriately required a science teacher to teach a scientific theory in biology class.
1995. The brochure, Religion in the Public Schools: A Joint Statement of Current Law, is published by Religion in the Public Schools. An excerpt states that "Schools may teach about explanations of life on earth, including religious ones (such as "creationism"), in comparative religion or social studies classes. In science class, however, they may present only genuinely scientific critiques of, or evidence for, any explanation of life on earth, but not religious critiques (beliefs unverifiable by scientific methodology). Schools may not refuse to teach evolutionary theory in order to avoid giving offense to religion nor may they circumvent these rules by labeling as science an article of religious faith. Public schools must not teach as scientific fact or theory any religious doctrine, including "creationism," although any genuinely scientific evidence for or against any explanation of life may be taught. Just as they may neither advance nor inhibit any religious doctrine, teachers should not ridicule, for example, a student's religious explanation for life on earth."
1997. In Freiler v. Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education,the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana rejects a policy requiring teachers to read aloud a disclaimer whenever they taught about evolution, ostensibly to promote "critical thinking". Besides addressing disclaimer policies, the decision recognizes that curriculum proposals for "intelligent design" are equivalent to proposals for teaching "creation science".
1999. The Kansas State Board of Education votes 6-4 in favor of science education standards that contain no mention of biological macroevolution, the age of the Earth, or the origin and early development of the Universe. As a result of the board's vote, evolutionary theory would not appear in state-wide standardized tests and it was left to the 305 local school districts in Kansas whether or not to teach it." In October 1999, the Kentucky Department of Education replaced the word "evolution" with "change over time" in state school standards. This will be the first of five decisions regarding evolution by the Kansas School Board.
2000. A People for the American Way poll finds that: 63% of Americans believe public schools should teach both evolution and creation; 20% of Americans believe public schools should teach evolution only; and that 16% of Americans believe public schools should teach creation only.
2001. The Kansas State Board of Education reverses its 1999 decision and rejects a compromise on Intelligent Design put forward by the creationist backers of the original 1999 decision.
2002. The Ohio Board of Education adopts a proposal that permits, but does not require, the teaching of intelligent design. Teachers are free to decide how to handle intelligent design. However, students must still take the state tests that are based on the state science standards which - for the first time in the state's history - include evolution.
2004. In October, Dover, Pennsylvania passes a law requiring the teaching of intelligent design in concert with evolution, in order to allow for religious neutrality. This results in a firestorm of criticism from scientists and science teachers and began legal proceedings challenging law based on their interpretation of the Aguillard precedent.
2005 The fiercely split Kansas Board of Education voted 6 to 4 to instruct science students that evolution could not rule out a supernatural or theistic source, that evolution itself was not fact but only a theory and one in crisis, and that Intelligent Design must be considered a viable alternative to evolution.
2005. In Selman v. Cobb County School District, a federal judge in Atlanta rules that the sticker son Cobb County public schools textbook - "This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered" - should be removed as they violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The school board subsequently decided to appeal the decision. In 2006, the case was settled out of court with the agreements that Cobb County school officials would not order the placement of "any stickers, labels, stamps, inscriptions, or other warnings or disclaimers bearing language substantially similar to that used on the sticker that is the subject of this action" and would not undermine science education in the future.
2007. The Kansas state Board of Education repealed science guidelines passed in 2005 that questioned evolution. The new guidelines reflect mainstream scientific views of evolution and represent a political defeat for advocates of Intelligent Design who had helped write the 2005.
Selected Resources for Teachers about Evolution
Audio-Visual Resources on Evolution and the
Scopes Trial