Abstract
In discussing the origins of the antievolution movement in American high schools within the framework of science and religion, much is overlooked about the influence of educational trends in shaping this phenomenon. This was especially true in the years before the 1925 Scopes trial, the beginnings of the school antievolution movement. There was no sudden realization in the 1920’s – sixty years after the Origin of Species was published – that Darwinism conflicted with the Bible, but until evolution was being taught in the high schools, there was no impetus to outlaw it. The creation of “civic biology” curricula in the late 1910’s and early 20’s, spearheaded by a close-knit community of textbook authors, brought evolution into the high school classroom as part of a complete reshaping of “biology” as a school subject. It also incorporated progressive ideologies about the purposes of compulsory public education in shaping society, and civic biology was fundamentally focused on the applications of the life sciences to human life. Antievolution legislation was part of a broader response to the ideologies of the new biology field, and was a reaction not only to the content of the new subject, but to the increasingly centralized control and regulation of education. Viewing the early school antievolution movement through the science-religion conflict is an artifact of the Scopes trial’s re-creation of its origins. What largely caused support for␣the school antievolution movement in the South and particularly Tennessee were concerns over public education, which biology came to epitomize.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
American Book Company Archives. Syracuse University Library. Syracuse, NY
Bailey, Kenneth K. 1950. The Enactment of Tennessee’s Antievolution Law Journal of Southern History 16(4): 472–490
Bigelow, Maurice A. 1913. Sex-Instruction as a Phase of Social Education. New York: American Social Hygiene Association
Bryan, William Jennings. 1922. “God and Evolution.” New York Times. February 26, 1922.1: 11
Catalogue of Williams College 1892–1893. 1892. Williamstown, MA: Williams College
Co-Author Amazed at His Book’s Part. 1925. Chattanooga Times. June 15, 1925. 5
Cole, William E. 1934. The Teaching of Biology. New York: D. Appleton
Cornelius, R. M. (eds.). 1996. Selected Orations of William Jennings Bryan. Dayton, TN: Bryan College
Department of Education, Records 1874–1964. Tennessee State Library and Archives. Nashville, TN
Dewey, John. 1916/2004. Democracy and Education. Mineola, NY: Dover
Grabiner, Judith V. and Miller, Peter D. 1974. Effects of the Scopes Trial. Science 185(4154): 832–837
Gruenberg, Benjamin C. 1919. Elementary Biology. Boston: Ginn and Co
Gruenberg, Benjamin C. 1925. Biology and Human Life. Boston: Ginn and Co
Gruenberg, Benjamin C. and Sidonie M. Papers. Library of Congress Manuscripts Collection. Washington, DC
Holt, Reinhart and Winston. 1980. The Beginning of Modern Biology: The Story of a Textbook. New York: Holt Reinhart and Winston
Hunter, George W. 1911. Essentials of Biology. New York: American Book Company
Hunter, George W. 1914. A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems. New York: American Book Company
Hunter, George W. 1923. New Essentials of Biology. New York: American Book Company
Hunter, George W. and Whitman, Walter C. 1921. Civic Science in the Home and Community. New York: ABC
Huxley T. H. and Martin, H. N. 1876. Course of Practical Instruction in Elementary Biology. New York: Macmillan
Israel, Charles A. 2004. Before Scopes: Evangelism, Education, and Evolution in Tennessee, 1870–1925. Athens, GA: Georgia
Journal of the Tennessee House 1925. Nashville, TN: State of Tenn
Keith, Jeanette. 1995. Country People in the Old South. Chapel Hill: North Carolina Press
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District 400 F. Supp. 2d 707 (2005)
Ladoucer, Ronald P. 2008. “Ella Thea Smith and the Lost History of American High␣School Biology Textbooks.” Journal of the History of Biology DOI 10.1007/s10739-007-9139-3
Larson, Edward J. 1997. Summer for the Gods. New York: Basic
Moon, Truman J. 1921. Biology For Beginners. New York: Henry Holt and Co
Moran, Jeffery P. 2000. Teaching Sex: The Shaping of Adolescence in the 20th Century. Cambridge: Harvard
Moore, Randy 2001. The Lingering Impact of the Trial on Biology Textbooks. BioScience 51(9): 790–796
Numbers, Ronald L. 1998. Darwinism Comes to America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP
Pauly, Philip J. 1990. The Struggle for Ignorance about Alcohol: American Physiologists, Wilbur Olin Atwater, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 64: 366–392
Pauly, Philip J. 1991. The Development of High School Biology: New York City, 1900–1925. Isis 82(4): 662–688
Peabody, James E. and Hunt, Arthur E. 1924. Biology and Human Welfare. New York: Macmillan
Peay, Governor Austin Papers. Tennessee State Library and Archives. Nashville, Tennessee
Rudolph, John L. 2005. Turning Science to Account: Chicago and the General Science Movement in Secondary Education Isis 96(3): 353–389
“Says School Board Avoided Argument 1925.” Chattanooga Times. June 14, 1925. 3
Scopes, John T. and Presley, James. (1967). Center of the Storm, Memoirs of John T. Scopes. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston
Sedgwick, William T. and Wilson, Edmund B. 1886. General Biology. New York: Henry Holt
Sheppard, Keith and Robbins, Dennis M. 2006. “A History of the Grade Placement of High School Biology.” The American Biology Teacher 68(7): 86–90
Skoog, Gerald. 2005. The Coverage of Human Evolution in High School Biology Textbooks in the 20th Century and in Current State Science Standards Science and Education 14(3–5): 395–422
Smallwood, W. M. et al. 1916. Practical Biology. Boston: Allyn and Bacon
Smallwood, W. M. et al. 1920. Biology for High Schools. Boston: Allyn and Bacon
United States Bureau of the Census 1921. Fourteenth Census of the United States. [1920]. 1. Washington, DC: Government Printing Office
University Archives. University of Chicago. Chicago, IL
Zimmerman, Jonathan. 1999. Distilling Democracy: Alcohol Education in America’s Public Schools, 1880–1925. Lawrence: Kansas
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Shapiro, A.R. Civic Biology and the Origin of the School Antievolution Movement. J Hist Biol 41, 409–433 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-007-9148-2
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-007-9148-2