What year did they start teaching evolution in US public schools?

In: Biology, Education

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Answer

U.S. public schools have always made an effort to stay current with modern science. Since Darwin published his "Origin of the Species" in England in 1859, it can be assumed that public schools in the U.S. began teaching the principles of evolution soon afterward--perhaps within a decade or so.

For example, the Nashville "Christian Advocate" (a Tennessee newspaper) was decrying the theory as a threat to faith as early as 1880. Evolutionary sciences met widespread resistance in the fundamentalist segments of the U.S., of course, leading to the infamous Scopes trial in Tennesee of 1925. It should be noted, however, that even though the fundamentalist cause was largely discredited during this event, evolution per se was more avoided than taught in public-school science classes (for fear of arousing the controversy again) until about the 1960s.

Answer

It varies state by state. The word evolution is banned in some states and the words "change over time" must be used. Dover, Pennsylvania is having to deal with criticisms of evolution as part of their curriculum. It's the folks from Intelligent design creationism that are pushing this. There are no actual weaknesses in evolution, nothing has ever been shown that evolution is not true. There are things we don't know but that is part of science as a whole, not just evolutionary science. God did it is not science.

First answer by Calybos. Last edit by Lahn. Contributor trust: 26 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 25 [recommend question]

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