Somewhere in heaven, John T. Scopes is watching the Tennessee Senate. Either that or he was reincarnated as a monkey and is too busy peeling bananas.
A Tennessee State Senate member has filed a resolution asking the Tennessee Department of Education to address a few basic questions about life, the universe and all that:
State Sen. Raymond Finney (R-Maryville), a retired physician, is asking the Senate to endorse his questions to the Department of Education, and for the department to come back with a response by January 15, 2008.
The evolution of this argument has deep Tennessee roots, going back to the famous "Monkey Trial" in 1925.
In 1925, business leaders in the Rhea County town of Dayton decided to test the Butler Act which stated, "... that it shall be unlawful for any teacher in any of the universities, normals and all other public schools of the state which are supported in whole or in part by the public school funds of the state, to teach any theory that denies the story of the divine creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals."
Dayton's city leaders felt that by challenging the act they would put the town on the map and it would be good for commerce, no matter what the verdict was. They convinced Rhea County football coach and substitute teacher John T. Scopes to teach a class on evolution in order to bring about a jury trial.
In short order, legendary barristers William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow descended on the town to argue the law and the case.
The trial brought international attention to the town and was the first criminal trial covered live by the media, in reports by Chicago radio station WGN.
That trial was the basis for the 1955 play and subsequent movie Inherit the Wind as well the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Summer for the Gods by Edward J. Larson.
This move by Finney, while not likely to receive the same level of interest as the Scopes case, may well have its roots in the same reasoning that encouraged the Rhea County leaders to spark the debate: a desire for attention.
The resolution needs only to be passed by the Republican-controlled Senate in order to force Tennessee's Department of Education to answer on the record. A joint resolution would have to pass the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives, where it would likely find itself relegated to a black hole committee and not see the light of day.
By circumventing the the House, Senate Republicans would then be forcing a Bredesen cabinet member to weigh in on the creationism argument, right before next year's legislative session when both parties would be seeking to add to their numbers in the 2008 elections.
While the sincerity of the proposed resolution by Finney is not in question, politics are also in play and shouldn't be ignored. It will also be interesting to see how the Republican caucus reacts to the resolution.
In 1999 the Board of Education for the State of Kansas, which was controlled by Republicans, changed the course curriculum for Kansas public schools and removed biological evolution from statewide standards. While the move was hailed by creationists, those school board members lost in the next Republican primary and the previous education standards were reinstated by the new board members in 2001.
For more background on the Scopes trial, see the reasonably grown-up account at Tennessee History for Kids, the educational site operated by NashvillePost.com co-founder Bill Carey.
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