Lectures on Tap - "Teaching Evolution in Our Schools: A Century of Debate"

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🧠 Lecture: "Teaching Evolution in Our Schools: A Century of Debate"

🎤 Speaker: Dr. John J. Murphy

In the summer of 1925, a small-town Tennessee courtroom became the unlikely center of a national clash over science, religion, and who controls what American children learn. The famous Scopes “Monkey Trial” turned a little-known teacher into the face of a much larger struggle over evolution, faith, and public education—one that never fully disappeared.

In this lecture, historian Dr. John J. Murphy revisits the strange, theatrical, and often misunderstood history of the Scopes Trial and the anti-evolution laws that made it possible. He’ll trace how evolution was pushed out of many American classrooms, how Sputnik and the Cold War helped bring it back, and how ongoing battles over creation science, intelligent design, textbooks, and school boards keep reopening the same core questions.

We’ll also look at what the “evolution debate” actually looks like in K–12 education today, and why a courtroom showdown from 1925 still shapes our conversations about science, religion, politics, and schooling in the United States.

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