John Scopes Influence On Society's Education

John Thomas Scopes was a teacher in Dayton, Tennessee, who was charged on May 5, 1925 for violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of evolution in Tennessee schools. According to http://www.biography.com/people/john-scopes-17183774 he is most known as the teacher that broke the law of teaching evolution in his classroom. He didn’t want to change his ways and he got into trouble for it. That A high school science teacher, John Scopes found himself at the center of one of the 20th century's most famous court battles. He served as the defendant in a case meant to challenge a state law against teaching Charles Darwin's theories of evolution in public schools.

Being the most important witness in the prosecution side, he made an accusation that John T Scopes taught him about evolution. The prosecution attorney then could state that John T Scopes was convicted and guilty of the crime committed. The defense side might argue about the law but could no longer claim that John did not teach evolution in school. The statements raised by Harry Shelton were very definite and potent. According to what he said, he warned John T Scopes that it’s illegal and not proper to teach evolution in school.

An anti-evolution law sparked the Scopes trial. Anti-evolution laws outlawed the teaching of evolution in public schools. Tennessee passed an anti-evolution law before the others in 1925. This took place when the Butler Act passed in Tennessee.

On July 1925, the Scopes Monkey trial convicted a teacher guilty for breaking the Butler Act. Inherit the Wind, by Robert E. Lee and Jerome Lawrence, reflects the Scopes Trial in which Bertram Cates is convicted guilty. Henry Drummond, Cates’s defense attorney, fights for the right to think, while educating the courtroom about science at the same time. With Henry Drummond’s boldness, knowledge, and encouragement, he convinces Cates that he did no wrong, and that the Butler Act is unjust.

This was a huge case in history and this changed how the schools

How to proceed in the matter of religious freedom? To be able to answer this question it is valuable to know some about how these freedoms were thought of by one of our founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson. “Whereas, Almighty God hath created the mind free.” This is the opening line of “Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, 1799, authored by Thomas Jefferson.

His thoughts made him for who he was and was the cause of the trial. The Scopes Monkey Trial was when a teacher, Bertram Cates, teaches the theory of evolution illegally in a town of creationist. Bertram Cates wasn’t allowed to teach evolution because it was only a theory then. Henry Drummond was Bertram Cates lawyer, free of charge because Henry Drummond believed that everyone had the right to think. He believed that this was important because for people could be diverse.

Key point being the fact that America has no set religion therefore schools should not teach only evolution, or only creationism. Both should be taught, or neither should be taught. Schools cannot teach neither though because there is valuable knowledge in both. During the trial Scopes said “... violation of my ideal of academic freedom-that is, to teach the truth as guaranteed in our constitution of personal and religious freedom”(“Scopes”). John Scopes had a very eye opening point; stating that he can believe whatever he wants to believe in because he has those rights granted by the Constitution.

John Scopes, voluntarily, was in violation of this law and was arrested in Dayton, Tennessee. This arrest led to one of the most famous trials in the 1920s. After teaching evolution illegally, John Scopes was the subject of controversial trial that opened people’s minds to the idea of evolution. John Scopes taught evolution to students in Tennessee which was against the law. The Butler Act made the teaching of evolution more difficult.

I was born March 24, 1755 in Scarborough, Massachusetts. My father, John Alsop, is a former New York delegate to the Continental Congress. My family has always been quite affluent due to my father’s success as a merchant. After finishing my elementary education at the age of 12, my father sent me to Dummer Academy, a boarding school in South Byfield, Massachusetts. I later started college at Harvard in 1773 when only two years later my education was interrupted when our facilities were allocated to house soldiers during the Revolutionary War.

“The Scopes Trial is one of the best known in American history events because it symbolizes the conflict between science and theology, faith and reason, individual liberty and majority rule,” (Mintz and McNeil par 1). The decade of the 1920’s was an era of rebellion, prosperity, and social changes. One major event that shocked the country through its discordance between urban enlightenment and rural protestantism was called “The Scopes Trial”, which involved the teachings of evolution. Before the trial took place, an act known as “The Butler Act” established that public schools prohibited the teachings of evolution to students. This act was passed in early 1925 by the Tennessee General Assembly for the reason being that students shouldn’t

More than two hundred newspaper reporters from all over the world had come to the small town of Dayton to witness the historical event take place; for the first time in history, a trial would be broadcast over the radio. (Johnson) The judge of the trial was John T. Raulston, a conservative Christian who craved publicity. The jury consisted of twelve men, the majority of them being farmers and church-goers. Superintendent White led off the prosecution’s list of witnesses with his testimony that John Scopes had admitted to teaching about evolution from Hunter’s Civic Biology textbook.

Ultimately, the eight boys were executed by the death penalty and another boy lived in jail for thirty-five years. This bears a striking resemblance to the trial of Tom Robinson in To Kill A Mockingbird. First off, the book and the Scottsboro case both had a woman’s word against a

At the time, certain events were taking place that allowed the rise of religious fundamentalism. Larson says, “These scientific developments helped set the stage in the early 1920s for a massive crusade by fundamentalists against teaching evolution in public schools, which culminated in the 1925 trial of John Scopes. ”13 Developments such as the increase of public schools, new fossil discoveries that strengthened the evolution argument, and the rise of religious fundamentalism all helped strengthen the case of anti-evolution advocates. These anti-evolution movements lead by religious leaders such as William Jennings Bryan argued that the teaching of evolution should be banned in public schools since it was the will of the majority, even if freedom of speech was compromised. The ACLU eventually advertised for a teacher to challenge the law that banned evolution.

The Scopes Monkey trial was one the biggest and most influential court cases of all time. John Scopes was a public high school teacher in dayton tennessee who was arrested and tried for breaking the butlers law. Passed in 1925 it made teaching evolution in any schools and colleges in the state of Tennessee illegal. This was because evolution challenges the idea of creationism which was the popular religion in the tennessee. this was a huge problem because it was written in the constitution that you must separate church and state.