The Scopes Trial
The Scopes Trial, widely know as the Monkey Trial, has been called the trial of the century, and opened the door to the conflict between creationism and evolution, even though the trial itself actually decided nothing. In fact upon appeal the trial was declared a mistrial due to the fact the judge sentenced Scopes to a $100 fine and there was a law which stated that any fine over $50 had to be set by a jury. So in effect the law banning the teaching of evolution was never even tested. This is all in addition to the fact that this trial started as nothing more than a publicity stunt dreamed up in order to help the ailing economy of Dayton Tennessee, and the defendant, John Scopes, who was actually a coach who only substituted as a teacher, was asked if he would be willing to go on trial before any charges were filed. The publicity stunt worked as evidenced by reporters coming from as far away as Hong Kong and the fact that it was the first trial ever broadcast live over the radio. In fact the trial effectively turned the small southern town of Dayton Tennessee into a three ring circus, complete with hot dog vendors and street merchants peddling anti-evolution books. While the trial may have been prearrange
d, and it didn’t actually accomplish what it was legally meant to, it did officially start the battle between creationism and evolution, which continues even today. While most ideologies are either on one side or the other the principal of academic freedom is actually on both. According to Bertrand Russell, “The essence of academic freedom is that teachers should be chosen for their expertness in the subject they are to teach and that the judges of this expertness should be other experts. Whether a man is a good mathematician, or physicist, or chemist, can only be judged by other mathematicians, or physicists, or chemists.” (179) This means that teachers or professors, in theory, are chosen because they know what they are talking about, and that they should be allowed to say whatever they want on that subject because they are experts. But the ideology of academic freedom goes further than that, academic freedom means that an instructor should not only present the dominant view, or even just their own view, but they should present conflicting views in order to allow their pupils to have all the information and make their own decision as to what they believe to be the “truth”. In the 1920’s with the Scopes trial academic freedom would state that evolution must be taught but now academic freedom states that intelligent design, or creationism, must be taught. Now this is not to say that either of these theories should be taught exclusively but that they both must be presented and that the evidence on both sides must be offered to students in order to allow them to reach their own conclusion. One would think that in the advanced society we live in today that this would not be an issue but it is. This is evidenced by the many groups such as the National Center for Science Education and their policies. The NCSE states on their homepage, “We are a nationally-recognized clearinghou
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Approximate Word count = 1289
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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