{"id":9424,"date":"2017-06-24T14:39:42","date_gmt":"2017-06-24T14:39:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=9424"},"modified":"2017-07-04T09:57:48","modified_gmt":"2017-07-04T09:57:48","slug":"30-years-after-edwards-v-aguillard-why-creationism-lingers-in-public-schools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/30-years-after-edwards-v-aguillard-why-creationism-lingers-in-public-schools\/","title":{"rendered":"30 years after Edwards v. Aguillard: Why creationism lingers in public schools"},"content":{"rendered":"

John E. Taylor<\/a>, West Virginia University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s decision in Edwards v. Aguillard<\/a>, a groundbreaking case that ruled it unconstitutional to require creationism to be taught in public schools.<\/p>\n

Though much has changed in 30 years, the broad questions raised by this case remain timely. Who gets to decide what knowledge will be transmitted to the next generation \u2013 parents? Elected officials? Academic experts? What role (if any) should the courts play in policing such decisions?<\/p>\n

As a scholar of education law and First Amendment law, I\u2019ve seen these very questions animate curricular controversies over climate change, American history, and more.<\/p>\n

While recent debates seem to share a common structure with controversies about the teaching of evolution, there\u2019s a key difference: Edwards v. Aguillard stands not for the broad idea that it\u2019s unconstitutional for public schools to teach \u201cbad science,\u201d but for the narrower idea that it\u2019s unconstitutional for them to teach religion as truth.<\/p>\n

A century of science and religion<\/h2>\n
\"\"<\/a>
In 1883, illustrator Joseph Ferdinand Keppler envisioned a future where religion and science were one.<\/span>
\nPuck, via Library of Congress<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some conservative religious believers \u2013 mainly fundamentalist or evangelical Protestants<\/a> \u2013 have long viewed Darwin\u2019s ideas as incompatible with their faith<\/a>. Consequently, they\u2019ve resisted the undiluted teaching of evolutionary theory in public schools.<\/p>\n

Early resistance took the form of statutes criminalizing the teaching of evolution, most famously the Tennessee ban at the heart of the famous \u201cScopes Monkey Trial<\/a>\u201d of 1925.<\/p>\n

In the next four decades, the legal playing field changed dramatically. The Supreme Court applied the Constitution\u2019s Establishment Clause<\/a> to the states in 1947<\/a>, initially reading the clause to require the \u201cseparation of church and state<\/a>.\u201d In the early 1960s, cases banning school-sponsored classroom prayer<\/a> and devotional Bible reading<\/a> interpreted the separation of church and state to mean that schools could teach about religion, but they couldn\u2019t constitutionally teach religion as true.<\/p>\n

It followed that teaching the biblical creation story as a true account of human origins was out of the question. The Supreme Court put a categorical end to Tennessee-style \u201cmonkey laws\u201d in its 1968 decision in Epperson v. Arkansas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Biology teacher Susan Epperson challenged Arkansas\u2019 ban on the teaching of the theory of evolution. Little Rock Central High School, Arkansas, Aug. 13, 1966.<\/span>
\nAP Photo<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 1971\u2019s Lemon v. Kurtzman<\/a>, the Supreme Court solidified its views on church-state separation by adopting a three-prong \u201ctest\u201d to determine whether laws violated the Establishment Clause. To be constitutional:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. A law must have a secular legislative purpose.<\/li>\n
  2. Its primary effect must neither advance nor inhibit religion.<\/li>\n
  3. It must not foster excessive government entanglement with religion.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Lemon\u2019s support on today\u2019s Supreme Court is much weaker than it was 40 years ago<\/a>, but it has been the dominant test employed in the case law on creationism and evolution.<\/p>\n

    Can we teach a bit of each?<\/h2>\n

    Why, then, didn\u2019t the Supreme Court\u2019s adoption of the Lemon test close the book on creationist teaching once and for all? The answer, in a nutshell, is that creationism went underground.<\/p>\n

    Once the state could neither teach biblical creationism nor categorically forbid the teaching of evolution, creationists turned to new strategies.<\/p>\n

    The first post-Epperson wave of resistance involved a number of state legislatures that required the \u201cbalanced treatment\u201d of both evolution and \u201cscientific creationism<\/a>\u201d in the science classroom. Students would be presented with two \u201cscientific\u201d accounts side by side and could make up their own minds.<\/p>\n

    Yet, for this strategy to succeed, proponents needed to convince courts that \u201cscientific creationism\u201d was more than just Sunday school in disguise. In McLean v. Arkansas<\/a> (1982), a federal district court struck down Arkansas\u2019s balanced treatment law, ruling that it merely omitted biblical references without actually changing the religious purpose of the law. The court also developed a definition of \u201cscience\u201d and concluded that \u201ccreation science\u201d did not satisfy it.<\/p>\n

    Edwards v. Aguillard<\/h2>\n
    \"\"<\/a>
    Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia wrote the dissenting opinion in Edwards v. Aguillard. Today\u2019s court is likely more sympathetic to Scalia\u2019s views of the Establishment Clause.<\/span>
    \nAP Photo\/Lana Harris<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    In 1981, Louisiana passed the \u201cBalanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science in Public School Instruction Act<\/a>.\u201d Though similar to the law struck down in McLean v. Arkansas, Louisiana lawmakers took extra steps to attempt to cleanse religion from their law<\/a> after Arkansas\u2019s balanced treatment act had been challenged in court.<\/p>\n

    Under the law\u2019s terms, no school was required to teach either evolution or creation science, but if one were taught, the other had to be taught as well. The declared purpose of the law was protecting \u201cacademic freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

    On June 19, 1987, the Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in the case of Edwards v. Aguillard<\/a> that the Louisiana law was unconstitutional. Writing for the court, Justice Brennan explained that the act had no secular purpose \u2013 and thus violated the first prong of the \u201cLemon test.\u201d Further, Brennan rejected the act\u2019s purported purpose of protecting academic freedom:<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe Act actually serves to diminish academic freedom by removing the flexibility to teach evolution without also teaching creation science, even if teachers determine that such curriculum results in less effective and comprehensive science instruction.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    \u2018Teaching the controversy\u2019<\/h2>\n

    Like Epperson v. Arkansas, the Edwards case was a decisive Supreme Court defeat for anti-evolution forces.<\/p>\n

    As creationists came to understand that the Supreme Court would not approve laws with religious agendas so close to the surface, many shifted their focus to more subtle tactics, which involved some version of \u201cteaching the controversy\u201d regarding evolution. One strategy was to adopt disclaimers explaining to students that evolution was a \u201ctheory, not a fact<\/a>\u201d or that teaching evolution was \u201cnot intended to influence or dissuade the Biblical version of Creation<\/a>.\u201d Courts uniformly ruled against these disclaimers.<\/p>\n

    Kitzmiller v. Dover School District<\/a> (2005), the best-known<\/a> post-Edwards case, addressed the strategy of substituting \u201cintelligent design theory\u201d for \u201cscientific creationism.\u201d A Pennsylvania school district\u2019s evolution disclaimer included the suggestion that students consider the theory of \u201cintelligent design\u201d as developed in the textbook, \u201cOf Pandas and People.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>
    A federal judge barred the Dover, Pennsylvania school district from teaching \u2018intelligent design\u2019 in biology class, saying the concept is creationism in disguise.<\/span>
    \nAP Photo\/Bradley C Bower<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Intelligent design proponents argue that mutation and natural selection cannot adequately explain the emergence of \u201cirreducibly complex\u201d biological structures; such structures must have been designed. Officially, the \u201cdesigner\u201d could have been anyone \u2013 a space alien, perhaps \u2013 thus \u201cintelligent design\u201d is claimed not to be religious in character<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    The district court, however, soundly rejected these arguments. As had the court in McLean v. Arkansas, the Kitzmiller court discussed the nature of science and concluded that intelligent design was not science.<\/p>\n

    The legacy of Edwards today<\/h2>\n

    Courts have been remarkably consistent in rejecting creationist efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution. It\u2019s tempting to see these cases as a sign that courts will protect the integrity of science and of academic judgments generally. (One might think, for example, that courts would just as readily step in when political actors reject the teaching of mainstream climate science in public schools.) But the cases don\u2019t sweep so broadly.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a>
    In 2011, Joe Zamecki protests outside a building where the Texas Board of Education was considering how the next round of science textbooks should address issues of creationism and climate change.<\/span>
    \nAP Photo\/Eric Gay<\/span><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    Even in cases where courts explicitly state that creationism\/intelligent design is not science, they make this point only as a step toward the critical point that creationism is religion. In other words, courts do not weigh in on whether science lessons must be supported by mainstream scientific experts, only that religious views can\u2019t be taught as science.<\/p>\n

    Respect for academic expertise is incredibly important. One might argue, as Robert Post has done<\/a>, that the expertise fostered by academic disciplines deserves First Amendment protection. But the courts aren\u2019t there yet.<\/p>\n

    Recent efforts to undermine the teaching of evolution have mainly taken the form of so-called \u201cacademic freedom\u201d or \u201cscience education\u201d bills, which have been proposed in a number of states and have passed in Louisiana<\/a> (2008) and Tennessee<\/a> (2012).<\/p>\n

    These bills exploit an opening left by Edwards v. Aguillard: Teachers are not required to teach creation alongside evolution; rather, they\u2019re given the \u201cacademic freedom\u201d to emphasize critiques while teaching evolution in their science classes. The bills downplay religion by not mentioning the topic of evolution or by mentioning it alongside other controversial topics like climate change.<\/p>\n

    Legal precedent would not allow public school teachers to explicitly use this \u201cacademic freedom\u201d to undermine science education in favor of religion<\/a>. However, it\u2019s difficult to know how many teachers are choosing to do so \u2013 and whether those choices have anything to do with the legislation.<\/p>\n

    \"TheEdwards v. Aguillard struck an important blow for science education, and it fundamentally reshaped the tactics available to creationists. Its influence on these fronts has been significant and laudable, but its reasoning is heavily reliant on historical links to old-school creationism and on a conception of the separation of church and state that\u2019s stricter than the likely views of current Supreme Court justices. These points limit the case\u2019s ability to speak to the full range of curricular problems we confront today.<\/p>\n

    John E. Taylor<\/a>, Professor of Law, West Virginia University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

    This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    John E. Taylor, West Virginia University This month marks the 30th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s decision in Edwards v. Aguillard, a groundbreaking case that ruled it unconstitutional to require creationism to be taught in public schools. Though much has changed in 30 years, the broad questions raised by this case remain timely. Who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":9425,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[292],"tags":[1660,2616,1829,2618,139,2615,2612,2617,250,2613,2614,364,2611,1077],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9424"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9424"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9501,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9424\/revisions\/9501"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}