Do Now: 10/24

• What are the differences between the urban and rural lifestyles?

• Give Examples.

• What conflicts arose between the urban and rural lifestyles of the 1920s?

Rural Life• Prosperity of the decade bypassed blacks and

farmers• 1900- 42% 0f all Americans were farmers• 1929- 25% were farmers

– Movement from the countryside to the cities• Overproduction of farm goods and plunge in prices

– Farmers failed to make mortgage payments– Farm crisis and depression

• Protective of traditional values and morals

Urban Life• 1920

– New York City- 5.6 million– Chicago- 3 million– Philadelphia- 2 million

• City Life-– Reading– Arguing current scientific and social ideas– Tolerated drinking, gambling and casual dating

•What is the theory of evolution?

•Is it taught in your biology classes?

Fundamentalism

Protestant movementgrounded in a literal, ornonsymbolic, interpretationof the Bible

Fundamentalism• Preachers led religious

revivals to plea for sinners to pledge themselves to clean Christian living-

• Billy Sunday and Aimee McPherson

Fundamentalism• Skeptical of some scientific

discoveries and theories– Rejected the theory of evolution

advanced by Charles Darwin in the 19th century (especially claim that humans evolved from apes.)

– Pointed to the Bible’s account in which God made the world in six days

The Scopes Trial

• March 1925- Tennessee passed the nation’s first law that made it a crime to teach evolution

– American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) promised to defend any teacher who challenged the law

The Scopes Trial

• John T. Scopes, young biology teacher from Dayton, Tennessee accepted challenge

– Clarence Darrow (ACLU) lawyer defended Scopes

– William Jennings Bryan- special prosecutor and devout fundamentalist

Bryan Darrow

“The Monkey Trial”• Trial began on July 10, 1925- national

sensation

• Covered live on the radio

• No scientists were allowed to be called

• Darrow called Bryan as expert of the Bible- he admitted that the Bible might be interpreted in different ways

• Big-city newspaper reporters very hostile to Bryan

“The Monkey Trial”

• Scopes found guilty and fined $100.• Bryan died 5 days after end of trial

• H.L. Mechken’s obituary for Bryan– Called Bryan a “charlatan, a mountebank, (A

person who deceives others, esp. in order to trick them out of their money) a zany without shame or dignity”

– Motivated by “hatred of city men who had laughed at him for so long.”

“Inherit the Wind”- 1960• Teacher B.T. Cates is arrested for

teaching Darwin's theories. Famous lawyer Henry Drummond defends him; fundamentalist politician Matthew Brady prosecutes. This is a very thinly disguised rendition of the 1925 "Scopes monkey trial" with debates between Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan taken largely from the transcripts.

Intelligent Design• Controversial assertion that

certain features of the universe and of living things exhibit the characteristics of a product resulting from an intelligent cause or agent, not an unguided process such as natural selection.

Modern Day “Scopes Trial”• Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District

• December 2005; Pennsylvania

• Suit brought by 11 parents challenges the Dover Area School District’s adoption last year of including “intelligent design” in the science curriculum along with teaching evolution

• Injecting religion into curriculum violates the 1st amendment

Modern Day “Scopes Trial”• Defendants argue that they are

not supporting creationism but that the curriculum should help students to understand the full range of scientific views that exist.

• Textbook- Of Pandas and People can be found in school library

Questions to Consider:

• Does Intelligent Design have a place in a science curriculum?

• Is Intelligent design a valid scientific theory?

Socratic Seminar

Do you believe that the Dover Board of Education violated the

constitutional separation of church and state by requiring high school

biology students to hear a statement that denigrates the theory

of evolution and introduces intelligent design?