In Larson's earlier book,
Trial and Error, he devotes several pages to the growth and changing role of secondary education throughout the country including Tennessee. High-school enrollment went from about 203,000 in 1890 to over 1,800,000 in 1920 and from 2,526 high schools in 1890 to 14,326 in 1920. One of these new high schools was a spacious two-story structure in Dayton, TN. The textbook industry was thriving and many local governments and school boards had to make decisions on which textbooks to purchase. Early science textbooks included references to Darwin and to evolution and did not draw attention until only a few years before the Scopes Trial. Why?
Here is an article that Larsen cites that gives some guidance into what was expected of educators in teaching science. You will note that this was published thirty-two years before the Scopes Trial.
Biology in Secondary Schools
Author(s): John M. Coulter
Source: The School Review, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Mar., 1893), pp. 141-151
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1074870
Accessed: 29-05-2018 20:31 UTC
"Early science textbooks included references to Darwin and to evolution and did not draw attention until only a few years before the Scopes Trial. Why?"
ReplyDeletePart of the answer must be the "conflation of atheism and bolshevism" in the aftermath of the Soviet revolution, as Susan Jacoby put it in "Freethinkers"... But that's the question that so perplexed Matthew Chapman, who couldn't understand why his ancestor's settled (though by no means completed) science remained so distinctively controversial here. That's why he undertook his pilgrimage to Dayton, as we'll soon read.
Thanks for posting, Don. We'll get the the rest of us signed on as authors tomorrow, and the fun will really begin!