Abstract
Campaigners are using new tactics to bring their doctrine into the classroom.
Last April, Tennessee became the second state to pass a law that prohibits public schools from restraining teachers who disregard state-mandated science curricula by instructing students about alleged ‘weaknesses’ and critiques of the scientific theory of evolution. Enacted under the guise of safeguarding academic freedom, the law purports to protect teachers ‘from discipline for teaching scientific subjects in an objective manner’. In reality, it gives cover to teachers who want to undercut scientifically accurate lessons about evolution by injecting veiled creationist doctrine into science classes.
This new focus on ‘academic freedom’ is just the latest tactic employed by a decades-long, surprisingly adaptable creationism movement, which aims to undermine, to the greatest extent possible, the teaching of evolution in US public schools. Blaming modern scientific developments – including the widespread acceptance of evolution – for destroying man’s reverence of God and giving birth to moral relativism, creationists’ first salvo in the fight against evolution was to criminalise its instruction by public school teachers.
Tennessee’s Butler Act, passed in 1925, was perhaps the most infamous of these efforts, prohibiting the teaching of ‘any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible’ or any theory ‘that man has descended from a lower order of animals’. Violators could be charged with a misdemeanor and fined up to $500. When high school biology teacher John T Scopes was prosecuted under the law, famed attorney Clarence Darrow and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), then a new organisation formed to protect individual rights and liberties, stepped up to represent him. The ensuing ‘Scopes Monkey Trial’ drew derision from around the country and the world, Tennessee became an international laughing stock, and the Butler Act was eventually repealed.
Despite the debacle that was the Scopes Monkey Trial, however, it was hardly the end of the creationism movement. Although teachers were no longer hauled into court and prosecuted as criminals, states continued to outlaw the teaching of evolution in public schools until the late 1960s, when the US supreme court struck down an Arkansas ban. Explaining that the sole purpose of the Arkansas law was to ‘suppress the teaching of a theory which, it was thought, “denied” the divine creation of man’, the court reasoned that allowing the state ‘to blot out a particular theory because of its supposed conflict with the biblical account, literally read’ would infringe the separation of church and state guaranteed by the US constitution.
Undeterred, creationists marched on, taking a new tack. If they could not ban outright the teaching of evolution, they decided they would at least curtail it by permitting evolution instruction only where creationism was afforded ‘equal time’ alongside it. But that strategy also met its demise at the supreme court, which, in 1987, overturned Louisiana’s ‘Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science in Public School Instruction Act’. The court explained that, ‘by requiring either the banishment of the theory of evolution from public school classrooms or the presentation of a religious viewpoint that rejects evolution in its entirety’, the statute improperly ‘employ[ed] the symbolic and financial support of government to achieve a religious purpose’.
After a second devastating loss in the nation’s highest court, creationists should have been ready to pack it in. Indeed, the supreme court had made it abundantly clear that any effort to proscribe evolution instruction or prescribe the teaching of creationism in public schools would never gain legal traction. Yet, it appears that one throwaway line in that 1987 decision, which reserved judgment on potential laws ‘requir[ing] that scientific critiques of prevailing scientific theories be taught’, gave them hope.
Seizing on this language, creationists set out to develop a comprehensive, biblically-based scientific theory that would uncover the weaknesses of evolution and could be taught in public schools. That theory, ‘intelligent design’, posited that nature is so irreducibly complex that it could only have been created by an ‘intelligent designer’. But they could not produce an iota of credible scientific evidence in support of the claim. As a result, the crusade to integrate intelligent design into public school science curricula quickly stalled after a federal court ruled that it was religious doctrine that merely repackaged creationist beliefs into pseudo-scientific terms.
ACLU lawyer Clarence Darrow defends John Scopes, who was accused of teaching evolution in a Tennessee high school, 10 July 1925
Credit: The Art Archive/Alamy
Reeling from loss after loss in the courts, it is not surprising that creationism advocates began to construct a new narrative: they started casting themselves as victims, subjected to decades of persecution and discrimination in the academic world because of their religious beliefs. And, also not surprisingly, soon after, they began to peddle the antidote to their alleged oppression − legislation, such as the Tennessee law, that promised to protect the academic freedom of those who question evolution and ensure that students receive all information necessary to think critically about the matter.
Although these laws are carefully worded to avoid references to the Bible, creationism and intelligent design, make no mistake: they pose a serious threat both to science education and the separation of church and state, which is a fundamental founding principle and mandated by the First Amendment to the US constitution. Indeed, the academic freedom laws advanced by creationist groups are so dangerous precisely because they are so insidious. As watchdog organisations like the National Center for Science Education and the ACLU have warned, these academic freedom laws are nothing more than ‘stealth creationism’.
For example, after proclaiming that instruction in some scientific subjects, such as ‘biological evolution’ and ‘the chemical origins of life’, may prove controversial or cause ‘debate and disputation’, the Tennessee law provides that officials may not prohibit any teacher ‘from helping students understand, analyse, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories’. It may sound benign enough, but this language has been carefully cultivated by creationism advocates to suggest, first and foremost, that there is debate in the scientific community about evolution’s soundness as a scientific theory and, second, that this controversy makes sense because evolution is plagued by a series of purported ‘weaknesses’.
In fact, within the legitimate scientific community, there is no controversy over the validity of evolution as a scientific theory. And the ‘weaknesses’ that proponents of the bill hope teachers will discuss are recycled intelligent design claims, unsupported by scientific evidence and resoundingly rejected by scientists.
Still, pressured by creationist groups and extreme religious factions, lawmakers across the country continue to propose ‘academic freedom’ measures each year. Most have failed to make it through the state legislatures. But with the passage of the Louisiana Science Education Act and the recent victory in Tennessee, concerns are rising. While watchdog groups, such as the ACLU, are closely monitoring these statutes and building cases to challenge them in court, the laws are written in a way that purposefully obfuscates their true aim and likely effect and are, therefore, harder to challenge on their face than past anti-evolution statutes.
In the meantime, these stealthy tactics may very well prove successful. A study published last year by Science indicated that only 28 per cent of US public high school biology teachers provide adequate instruction in evolution. According to the study, hoping to avoid a backlash from students and parents, many teachers simply ‘fail to explain the nature of scientific inquiry, undermine the authority of established experts, and legitimise creationist arguments’. Laws encouraging and authorising teachers to spread misinformation about evolution will only exacerbate this problem by emboldening those teachers already prone to teaching creationist beliefs and engendering a more difficult and politically charged environment for those who seek to abide by state science curricula.
In spite of creationists’ claims of martyrdom, discouraging and undermining the transmission of accurate scientific information in this manner is entirely irreconcilable with basic academic freedom principles. It turns academic freedom on its head, transforming it from a shield against censorship into a sword of suppression.
The truth is that advocates of these laws are not interested in protecting academic freedom or critical thinking. Rather, by wrapping anti-evolution measures in these traditionally venerated values, creationists hope to silence potential critics. Many who might have otherwise scrutinised the law are disarmed, lulled into a false sense of security. After all, what could be bad about a law that aims to bolster academic freedom and critical thinking? Meanwhile, even lawmakers and others who recognise that these laws promote stealth creationism may be reluctant to object because they do not want to be painted as opponents of these noble principles.
In light of these obstacles, it is imperative that educators and activists fighting laws like the Tennessee statute aim first to strip away the cloak of academic freedom and reveal these laws for what they really are – wolves in sheep’s clothing. Of course, even assuming we succeed in staving off this latest attack, if history is any indication, creationism advocates will adapt and quickly find new ways to undermine the teaching of evolution in public schools. That’s the funny thing about the creationism movement: it’s always evolving.