The document discusses the Scopes Trial of 1925, which brought the conflict between religion and science in American schools to national attention. It took place in Dayton, Tennessee and pitted William Jennings Bryan, a populist defending literal Biblical interpretations and the right of local communities to determine school curricula, against Clarence Darrow, who argued science should be taught regardless of religious objections. The trial highlighted ongoing ideological tensions between Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian views of centralized vs localized control of education. It ultimately solidified the influence of educational experts over local communities in determining public school curricula.
Write response to reading of two article/tutorialoutletBridgwood
FOR MORE CLASSES VISIT
tutorialoutletdotcom
• ABSTRACT It is argued that despite formidable foes—including powerful
feminist organizations and Native American rights groups—
Indigenous women’s activism had an important influence on the
larger movement for the termination of sterilization abuse in
1970s USA.
This (30-slide) powerpoint presentation was the introduction to a course on Religion and Political Controversy in the U.S. Largely based on Barbara McGraw\'s "Taking Religious Pluralism Seriously" (2005), it outlines the historical origins of the American political theology behind the Constitution, frames the stakes and issues, and introduces the controversies that my students wrestled with throughout the course.
The Cracking of the Two Halves of the Walnut --On American Anti-War Movement ...inventionjournals
The young American generation in the sixties seemed to have launched a pro-communist crusade against American establishment reversing the anti-communist crusade at home which William Chafe compared to “the other half of the same walnut” in his book The Unfinished journey. So what cracked open the walnut? Was it really like the conspiracy theory put forward by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)which explains that the American young had been poisoned by communism to act against the society built by their parents’ generation? This paper will demonstrate that the anti-war movement and the counterculture movement on the whole was actually an accumulated end product of the development of American history in the 20th century especially that of the post-war years. And to tje countrary of the conspiracy theory, the student generation was actually the staunchest promoter of the original American ideals,
Write response to reading of two article/tutorialoutletBridgwood
FOR MORE CLASSES VISIT
tutorialoutletdotcom
• ABSTRACT It is argued that despite formidable foes—including powerful
feminist organizations and Native American rights groups—
Indigenous women’s activism had an important influence on the
larger movement for the termination of sterilization abuse in
1970s USA.
This (30-slide) powerpoint presentation was the introduction to a course on Religion and Political Controversy in the U.S. Largely based on Barbara McGraw\'s "Taking Religious Pluralism Seriously" (2005), it outlines the historical origins of the American political theology behind the Constitution, frames the stakes and issues, and introduces the controversies that my students wrestled with throughout the course.
The Cracking of the Two Halves of the Walnut --On American Anti-War Movement ...inventionjournals
The young American generation in the sixties seemed to have launched a pro-communist crusade against American establishment reversing the anti-communist crusade at home which William Chafe compared to “the other half of the same walnut” in his book The Unfinished journey. So what cracked open the walnut? Was it really like the conspiracy theory put forward by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)which explains that the American young had been poisoned by communism to act against the society built by their parents’ generation? This paper will demonstrate that the anti-war movement and the counterculture movement on the whole was actually an accumulated end product of the development of American history in the 20th century especially that of the post-war years. And to tje countrary of the conspiracy theory, the student generation was actually the staunchest promoter of the original American ideals,
KAFKAS ÜNİVERSİTESİ/KAFKAS UNIVERSITY
SOCIOLOGY
Course
LECTURE NOTES AND POWER POINT PRESENTATIONS
Prof.Dr. Halit Hami ÖZ
Kars, TURKEY
hamioz@yahoo.com
Race and Society (Chapter 9, "You May Ask Yourself")Emily Coffey
A review of the impact of society on race, racism, and racial equality, particularly in America. Appropriate for 100-level sociology courses. If you like it, feel free to use it!
----
"You May Ask Yourself" second edition (2011), D. Conley, W.W. Norton - Chapter 9
----
*** This is only my "reworking" of pre-packaged PPT files included textbook published by W.W. Norton. Some materials copyright by W.W.Norton.
KAFKAS ÜNİVERSİTESİ/KAFKAS UNIVERSITY
SOCIOLOGY
Course
LECTURE NOTES AND POWER POINT PRESENTATIONS
Prof.Dr. Halit Hami ÖZ
Kars, TURKEY
hamioz@yahoo.com
Race and Society (Chapter 9, "You May Ask Yourself")Emily Coffey
A review of the impact of society on race, racism, and racial equality, particularly in America. Appropriate for 100-level sociology courses. If you like it, feel free to use it!
----
"You May Ask Yourself" second edition (2011), D. Conley, W.W. Norton - Chapter 9
----
*** This is only my "reworking" of pre-packaged PPT files included textbook published by W.W. Norton. Some materials copyright by W.W.Norton.
Listado de agencias de restablecimiento designadas por la oficina de Població...Minex Guatemala
Listado de agencias de restablecimiento designadas por la oficina de Población, Refugiados y Migración del Departamento de Estado de los Estados Unidos de América
Meet your design needs and application challenges with Dow Corning materials innovation, application expertise, and global service and support.
Our proven, high-performance solutions are ready to go to work are used to fabricate heat- and fuel-resistant seals, hoses and gaskets and other durable, long-lasting functional components.
Si necesita realizar alguna consulta o más información, visítenos: www.antala.com
CH 2 Liberty and Literacy_The Jeffersonian Ideal.pptxVATHVARY
Describe the connections between political economy, ideology, and early republic schooling.
Evaluate classical liberalism's impact on democracy and recognize its limitations regarding marginalized groups.
Examine Jefferson's educational proposals in relation to the political and ideological context of his era.
Explore diverse perspectives on democracy as both a form of government and an ideal of inclusive decision-making.
Examine potential conflicts between meritocracy and democracy, especially concerning representative merit definitions.
Critically analyze Jefferson's proposals for public schooling funding and control in Virginia, comparing them with contemporary systems.
Defining CultureCulture as a Shared System of Meaning.docxvickeryr87
Defining Culture
Culture as a Shared System of Meaning
Culture: the knowledge that people in groups share and learn, which helps them to interpret and generate behavior
Components of Culture
Abstract body of knowledge expressed in various things throughout society
Beliefs, values, ideals, expectations, explanations
Ways of acting and interacting
People in groups (can not have a culture of one)
Culture as communication from individuals to the group
Cultures spawn subculture (subset of larger culture)
Subcultures have more of an impact on an individual’s lifestyle because they are more specialized
Have mostly to do with how you construct your reality, although you are still part of the national culture
What are some subcultures that you belong to?
Enculturation: the process of learning one’s own culture—also known as cultural learning.
Primary learning period is from birth to age seven
Continue learning throughout entire life
Dual-process of enculturation
Tacit: understood learning (observed/experienced learning)
Tacit learning is more valuable
Explicit: stated or written
Formal codes, laws, institutions
Sanctions: system of rewards and punishments
*Example of cultural learning: Southern California freeways. How does being able to survive on the freeways of Southern California require a combination of tacit and explicit cultural knowledge?
Cultural knowledge helps you interpret behavior and generate your own behavior
Allows individuals to act among others and be understood
Evolves and changes
Question to consider:
What are some examples of the way cultural knowledge has changed over time?
For example, look at the way we understand
gender in the contemporary moment—how has what it means to be a woman changed since even the beginning of the 20th century?
Set of ideas to defend/rationalize the distribution of power
Inequalities are arbitrary in that they are socially constructed/socially agreed upon
So what does this mean?
System of beliefs about the world that involves distortions of reality at the same time it provides justification for the status quo.
Ideology serves the interests of groups in the society who justify their position by distorting social definition of reality.
Social control? Gives “us” a definition of reality that is false, yet it simultaneously orders our comprehension of the surrounding world, it constructs our reality.
Ideology: system of justification (or to make right) of arbitrary inequalities
A social construction, or social construct, is an idea which may appear to be natural and obvious to those who accept it, but in reality is an invention or artifact of a particular culture or society.
Social constructs are in some sense human choices rather than laws resulting from divine will or nature.
Obvious social constructs include such things as games, language, money, governments, universities, corporations and other institutions.
Less obvious social constru.
Write about Corporate social responsibility Free Essay Example. Corporate Social Responsibility Essay Example | Topics and Well Written .... Corporate Social Responsibility (Essay) | BBA102 - Principles of .... Sample essay on corporate social responsibility. Corporate Social Responsibility Essay. Corporate social responsibility essay. Essay on Corporate Social Responsibility: Kmart. Corporate Social Responsibility Essay - Assignment 1 - Semester 1 2015 ....
Historical criticism attempts to read texts in their original situations, informed by literary and cultural conventions reconstructed from comparable texts and artifacts. African American interpretation extends this approach to questions about race and social location for the ancient text, its reception
history, and its modern readers. It arose as a corrective and alternative to white supremacist use of the Bible in moral and political arguments regarding race, civil rights, and social justice. Accordingly, African American interpretation has combined the
insights of abolitionists and activists with academic tools to demonstrate how biblical interpretation can function as an instrument of oppression, obfuscation, or opportunity. Of course, most of these developments have occurred in the larger framework of American Christianity. Yet, its analyses reach
beyond that specific setting, touching on the connections between the Bible and race in public discourse generally, whether in government, academia, or popular culture.
Essay on Population | Population Essay for Students and Children in .... Essay websites: Over population essay. Persuasive Essay: Essay on population growth.
Running head Civil Rights Leaders Malcolm X1Civil Rights L.docxsusanschei
Running head: Civil Rights Leaders: Malcolm X
1
Civil Rights Leaders: Malcolm X
3Civil Rights Leaders: Malcolm X
Student’s Name
Institution Affiliation
Civil Rights Leaders: Malcolm X
Malcolm X born as Malcolm Little in 1925 Omaha Nebraska will be remembered for many things, but mostly, he is remembered for being one of the most African Americans in history. He was orphaned at an early age after his father was killed and his mother placed in a mental institution. He was later arrested and imprisoned at 20 for larceny and in there he become a member of the Nation of Islam. After his parole in 1952, he was become one of the top most leaders of the organization. His name X was a name he took up while in prison to symbolize his stolen African Identity and the fact that the Nation Islam spoke of Europeans as Immoral and advocated for Black Nationalism and racial separatism pulled Malcolm to the organization. This is the same message he spoke to people while in and out of prison and it captured many people’s hearts (History, 2016).
He will be remembered for his leadership in Islam that saw the population grow from 400 to 40,000 members in a span of 10 years. He exhorted black communities to cast of Slavism by whichever means possible, violence inclusive. He was the first African American to form the Afro-American Unity organization where he spoke with so much conviction that the problem facing African-Americans in the U.S.A. was racism and not the white counter parts as many would have thought. Malcolm will be remembered for making speeches that racism should be rid of as it was the greatest foe to African-Americans and his passion for the rights of his people made his movement gain many followers and he became one of the most influential civil rights movement in history (History, 2016).
References
History. (2016). This Day In History: Malcomm X Assasinated. History, 1.
HIS 1120, American History II 1
Course Learning Outcomes for Unit VII
Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:
8. Analyze the social, political, and economic impact on civil rights from the mid-20th century to
today.
Reading Assignment
H. J. Res. 1145, 88th Cong. 88-408 (1964) (enacted). Retrieved from
http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?doc=98&page=transcript
Kennedy, J. F. (1962, September 12). 1962-09-12 Rice University [Speech]. Retrieved from
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Asset-Viewer/MkATdOcdU06X5uNHbmqm1Q.aspx
Kennedy, R. F. (1968, April 4). 1968-04-04 RFK on MLK [Audio file]. Retrieved from
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1968-04-04_RFK_on_MLK.ogg
The Bay of Pigs. (n.d.). JFK in history. Retrieved from http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/The-Bay-of-
Pigs.aspx
In order to access the resources below, you must first log into the myWaldorf Student Portal and access the
America: History and Life with Full Text database within the Waldorf Online Library.
In order to access the following resource(s ...
Chapter 5
Creationism and Intelligent Design
E. coli is the poster-bug for ‘Intelligent Design’. It propels itself with an ingenious rotating tail
or ‘flagellum’ – a sort of bacterial outboard motor. With its many connected parts working
together towards the specified end of locomotion, this flagellum fulfils the criteria for design
set out by William Paley in 1802. But surely the triumph of the modern theory of evolution has
made it impossible to prefer Paley’s theological explanation of such adaptations to Darwin’s
naturalistic one? Apparently not for everyone.
Since the early 1990s, supporters of the movement promoting ‘Intelligent Design’ or ‘ID’ in the
United States have been mounting a challenge to the neo-Darwinian theory that all forms of life
have evolved through the processes of genetic variation, heredity, and natural selection.
Devotees of ID, including the lawyer Philip Johnson, the mathematician, philosopher, and
theologian William Dembski, and the biochemist Michael Behe, say that it represents a serious
scientific challenge to evolution. They think that certain aspects of the natural world, such as
the bacterial flagellum, are too complex and too unlikely to have been produced by processes
of genetic mutation and natural selection. And they use detailed calculations, based on
debatable mathematical assumptions about information and probability, to quantify that
unlikeliness and to justify their incredulity. Michael Behe focuses especially on complex
chains of chemical processes within cells such as the series of reactions involved in the
clotting of blood in mammals, known as the ‘blood clotting cascade’. He is, if you like, Paley
with a doctorate in biochemistry. The most plausible explanation of the ‘irreducible
complexity’ of the flagellum, the blood clotting cascade, and many other phenomena which rely
on complicated interactions between multiple components, Behe believes, is that they were
produced by an intelligent designer (whom he and most of his readers suppose to be God).
The American Association for the Advancement of Science has stated that ID is characterized
by ‘significant conceptual flaws in its formulation, a lack of credible scientific evidence, and
misrepresentations of scientific facts’ and that its central concept is ‘in fact religious, not
scientific’. In a landmark case in Pennsylvania in 2005, Judge John E. Jones ruled against the
Dover Area School Board’s policy of requiring biology teachers to read out a statement about
ID. Judge Jones stated that ID was religious, not scientific; and that the decision of the Board
to adopt this policy, breaching the First Amendment prohibition on state sponsorship of
religion, showed ‘breathtaking inanity’. Religious leaders have come out against ID too. An
open letter affirming the compatibility of Christian faith and the teaching of evolution, first
produced in response to controversies in Wisconsin in 2004, has now been signed by over ten
thousand clergy from d.
Final Written Exercise The most important lesson I have .docxericn8
Final Written Exercise
The most important lesson I have learned from this class is that history, at least the history taught in
classrooms, is not an accurate, unbiased account of the past. In reality, history presented by highly
regulated textbooks has been twisted in such a way that students are not given a clear picture of past
events, individuals, and conflicts. Various interest groups and demographics have essentially dictated
which information can rightfully be published, and which information is too threatening to reach the
pages. According to author Alexander Stille, “American history taught in schools has been rewritten and
transformed in recent decades by a handful of large publishers who are more concerned to meet the
demands of both the multicultural left and the conservative religious right” (The Betrayal of History). In
essence, textbooks have reworked history in such a way that it has become falsified and flavorless. Facts
are presented without controversy, and important historical figures are portrayed without blemish. As
historian James Loewen writes, “authors selectively omit blemishes to make certain historical figures
sympathetic to as many people as possible” (Loewen, 26). This quotation declares that authors withhold
relevant historical information from textbooks, which further supports the idea that history has been
continually distorted in today’s classrooms.
In regards to Christopher Columbus, I learned that he was not the “American hero” that textbooks
portray him as being. As we all know, he was credited for “discovering America,” yet he was not the first
non-Native to reach the Americas. 2“People from other continents had reached the Americas many
times before 1492. Europeans may already have been fishing off Newfoundland in the 1480s” (Loewen,
33). Also, I was previously unaware that Columbus was involved in the murder and persecution of many
Native Americans. In fact, he initiated a punishing policy that “resulted in complete genocide” of the
Natives (Zinn, 7). Finally, I learned the shocking statistic that there were as many as 120 million Native
Americans by 1492 (Discussion 2). Upon learning this number, I was completely stunned, as I had
severely underestimated the size of their population.
As little kids, we are all told the story of the pious, freedom-seeking Pilgrims who landed in Plymouth.
Additionally, we all learned about the “First Thanksgiving” where the Native Americans and Pilgrims
peacefully united for a wonderful, bountiful feast. This story, however, is historically inaccurate. In
reality, the Pilgrims were not seeking religious freedom at all, because they had already found that in
the Netherlands (Discussion 3). Furthermore, the Pilgrims were very economically driven. In fact, “profit
was the primary reason most Mayflower colonists made the trip” (Loewen, 87). Nevertheless, American
society perpetuates the story of the brave Pilgrims .
Final Written Exercise The most important lesson I have .docxbryanwest16882
Final Written Exercise
The most important lesson I have learned from this class is that history, at least the history taught in
classrooms, is not an accurate, unbiased account of the past. In reality, history presented by highly
regulated textbooks has been twisted in such a way that students are not given a clear picture of past
events, individuals, and conflicts. Various interest groups and demographics have essentially dictated
which information can rightfully be published, and which information is too threatening to reach the
pages. According to author Alexander Stille, “American history taught in schools has been rewritten and
transformed in recent decades by a handful of large publishers who are more concerned to meet the
demands of both the multicultural left and the conservative religious right” (The Betrayal of History). In
essence, textbooks have reworked history in such a way that it has become falsified and flavorless. Facts
are presented without controversy, and important historical figures are portrayed without blemish. As
historian James Loewen writes, “authors selectively omit blemishes to make certain historical figures
sympathetic to as many people as possible” (Loewen, 26). This quotation declares that authors withhold
relevant historical information from textbooks, which further supports the idea that history has been
continually distorted in today’s classrooms.
In regards to Christopher Columbus, I learned that he was not the “American hero” that textbooks
portray him as being. As we all know, he was credited for “discovering America,” yet he was not the first
non-Native to reach the Americas. 2“People from other continents had reached the Americas many
times before 1492. Europeans may already have been fishing off Newfoundland in the 1480s” (Loewen,
33). Also, I was previously unaware that Columbus was involved in the murder and persecution of many
Native Americans. In fact, he initiated a punishing policy that “resulted in complete genocide” of the
Natives (Zinn, 7). Finally, I learned the shocking statistic that there were as many as 120 million Native
Americans by 1492 (Discussion 2). Upon learning this number, I was completely stunned, as I had
severely underestimated the size of their population.
As little kids, we are all told the story of the pious, freedom-seeking Pilgrims who landed in Plymouth.
Additionally, we all learned about the “First Thanksgiving” where the Native Americans and Pilgrims
peacefully united for a wonderful, bountiful feast. This story, however, is historically inaccurate. In
reality, the Pilgrims were not seeking religious freedom at all, because they had already found that in
the Netherlands (Discussion 3). Furthermore, the Pilgrims were very economically driven. In fact, “profit
was the primary reason most Mayflower colonists made the trip” (Loewen, 87). Nevertheless, American
society perpetuates the story of the brave Pilgrims .
ASSIGNMENT COPY HISTORY 2 PARTHIST - TWO PART POINT OF TOPIC D.docxlesleyryder69361
ASSIGNMENT COPY HISTORY 2 PART
HIST - TWO PART POINT OF TOPIC
DISCUSSION PART ONE
PART ONE Original answer in college level SCHOLOARLY content. Properly cited, plagiarism free
Discussion
USING, book by
Jeanette Keith, in the Introduction to her textbook The South, a Concise History, Vol. 1, provides three categories of themes that she sees at work in the History of the American South, or examine other books and/or journal articles on the topic: History of the American South.
Defense of liberty, is the theme for the original discussion post?
Using reading sources on this topic, highlight and explain an example of the defense of liberty theme in complete, competent professionally well written scholarly content that stays relevant and on topic in 5-7 paragraphs.
PART TWO – Respond to (3) comments in 1-3 paragraphs of relevant RESPONSE content.Bottom of Form
1Top of Form
1. Discussion Response (1)
When examining the History of the American South, there are three key themes which repeatedly surface in this examination. An often overlooked theme in the development of southern history is religion. In order to understand the seriousness of religion in the American South, it is crucial to backtrack to 1517. In the years following Christopher Columbus's voyages, a monumental religious movement known as the Protestant Reformation occurred throughout Europe. This reformation caused large masses of people to at first question some of the teachings of the Catholicism; later many Christians adamantly rejected Catholicism and became who would later be known as Protestants. In the four major European powers of this time (England, Spain, France, and Portugal), Protestantism was most prominent in England while Catholicism remained prominent the nations of Spain, France, and Portugal. It is important to note that not every single person in England was protestant because there were sizable Catholic minorities who, generally speaking, later went into hiding or fled the country when Protestants came to power. Along the same lines, there were small groups of Protestants in Spain, France, and Portugal as well, but again, generally speaking, most people in Catholic-dominated countries tended to identify with Catholicism while a sizable amount of people in England tended to publicly identify with Protestantism.
As Spanish and French colonization of the New World progressed, Jeanette Keith notes that both Catholic and Protestant groups realized the importance of establishing a presence in the New World. With Spain's presence in the Caribbean and in the southern portions of the new continent along with France's presence in the northern reaches (along with a presence in what is now Louisiana) of the New World, Protestants in England began to realize the seriousness of the problem of preserving and expanding the Protestant faith. Exploring and claiming new territories would prevent the expansion of opposing faiths into the claimed territories. Both Protestants and Ca.
1. The Scopes Trial: Reason vs. Religion
Who Will Control the Curriculum?
Michael W. Popejoy, Ph.D.
The Scopes Trial: Religion vs. Reason
The Scopes Trial, also more
popularly known as the Monkey Trial,
brought the conflict between religion and
science to national attention; but, from a
deeper ideological perspective it was part of
a continuing struggle in American political
ideology between Hamiltonianism and
Jeffersonianism. Prior to this, the debate had
been primarily a scholarly one; indeed, the
debate had been waged decades before in
the universities. It also probably did more
for the career of Clarence Darrow and
lasting fame of William Jennings Bryan
(posthumously) than for any specific
curriculum reforms of the times. But, the
debate centered on the important issue of
what could or could not be taught in public
schools and ultimately who would control
the public school curriculum; the people (in
the Jeffersonian tradition) or the elite few
who claimed an expert status over education
(in the Hamiltonian tradition). Despite the
verdict in favor of the anti-evolutionists
(now called pro-creationists), science was
unyieldingly locked-in to the curriculum of
the future in public education, as it solidified
the influence of the education experts.
In 1997, Peter F. Oliva identified ten
axioms or principles of curriculum theory.
His second axiom related curriculum as a
product of its time, “a school curriculum not
only reflects but is a product of its time” (p.
29,). Although today curriculum changes are
more rapid due to advanced technology and
communications, it nevertheless seems true
that curriculum responds to contemporary
events. Oliva further states, “Clearly, the
curriculum responds to and is changed by
social forces, philosophical positions,
psychological principles, accumulating
knowledge, and educational leadership at its
moment in history. Changes in society
clearly influence curriculum development”
(p. 29).
This paper presents modest
confirming historical evidence supporting
Oliva’s second axiom, and juxtaposes this
with the ideological and political
frameworks of Jeffersonian and Hamiltonian
traditions and political thought. The
philosophical positions are opposing
traditional rural agrarian community life
(Jeffersonianism) (Kennedy, 2000) against a
modern urban city (state) life where experts
dominated (Hamiltonianism)(Chernow,
2004).
The Scopes Trial took place in the
summer of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee—a
little market town lodged in a valley off the
Walden Ridge on the Cumberland Plateau.
But, the forces leading up to that relatively
singular event were decades in the making
and were monumental in their impact. This
trial became the public forum in which the
debate between religion and science would
get its first public test; as well the trial
would be expected to demonstrate who was
accountable for the curriculum: what is
taught and the content of textbooks; the
beliefs of a culture of tradition or the
empiricism of a culture of science.
Oliva identified and linked the
philosophical movement of Progressivism
and the expanded role of the high school in
American society of the day (Larson, 1997;
Schubert, 1986). He also identified a change
from the more traditional values of the times
to a more “mechanized society” of
modernity(Olivia, 1997, p.31; Pursell,
1995).
This shift from traditional values
2. based on faith in Judeo-Christian
fundamentalism to a scientific society based
on reason became the flash-point for the
debate on who would control the minds of
students. The events leading up to and
following the Scopes Trial supports the
confirmation of Oliva’s second axiom as a
curriculum principle. It also confirms that
Hamilton’s and Jefferson’s fundamental
ideologies were still being debated even into
the 20th
century.
Education in the Southern Tradition
The South is a unique region of the
country with traditions that contributed to
the conflicts between that “old time
religion” and the new science. This trial was
more than Darrow against Bryan, even more
than science against religion, it was also
about hicks against city sophisticates; rural
and agrarian life against the encroachment
of the urbanized, machine society; indeed
Hamilton against Jefferson.
John Gould Fletcher, in his essay,
“Education, Past and Present”, wrote, “the
objective of education was to produce good
men” (Rock, 1930). The South lives under
the social organization of the clan, the
family, the city-state, and the religious
brotherhood; all tied to the soil in an
agrarian culture. It is a band of individuals
held together by certain practices that it
assumes will be of mutual benefit to its
members. This backdrop to the south was
well illustrated by William J. Cooper, Jr. in
his book, Jefferson Davis, American (2000).
As early as 1845, Tennessee and
Alabama adopted state controlled systems of
free public education. This system survived
the Civil War to become the model for
Southern education; although the urban,
machine-driven industry of the North
created a curriculum that was not well suited
to the Southern tradition. A growing nation
was stretching its arms wide to embrace
social issues and bring them within the
control of the government—the beginning of
the administrative state populated by experts
in every field, including education (White,
1950).
Fletcher wrote, “The system of high-
school instruction that spread from the North
to the South was a disaster of the first
magnitude” (p. 118). It was not adapted to
Southern life that was predominately rural
and agricultural. Southern education should
produce Southern gentlemen. The
curriculum goals of the North were to train
for industry as Hamilton had called for
rather than for harmonious living and self-
aggrandizement rather than peace with God.
Frank Lawrence Owsley wrote,
“Much of the struggle is between an
agrarian and industrial civilization…an
irrepressible conflict” (in Rock, 1930, p. 91).
The South held for states’ rights above
federal power—that meant that the states
could control their curriculum content,
including selection of textbooks and what
could and could not be taught in their public
schools.
Further adding to the evidence that
the South was somehow different is John
Crowe Ransom, “The agrarian discontent in
America is deeply grounded in the love of
the tiller of the soil…industrialism sets itself
against the most ancient and the most
humane of all the modes of human
livelihood” (in Rock, 1930, p. 18).
Hamilton’s ideology was clearly rejected by
the South—this then contributed to a Civil
War for reasons far beyond merely the
slavery question. Indeed, Robert Fogel’s
Nobel Prize winning cliometric research on
slavery as an economic institution in the
South demonstrated clearly that the rise of
the industrial revolution would have doomed
slavery without the intervention of a civil
war. How certain this conclusion is
historically is a matter of debate. And,
Hamilton clearly preferred the slave as a
freeman trained to work in industry where
labor shortages were common (Randall,
2003). Jefferson, a slave owner, would
3. likely never have agreed.
This rural, agrarian sectarian culture
was also deeply religious firmly in the
fundamentalist camp. This religious fervor
became particularly acute after the Civil
War. The South had lost the Cause, and its
culture, its very identity was in question.
Southerners sought their salvation and
redemption in the evangelistic,
fundamentalist churches—particularly
Baptist (Ezell, 1975; Hall & Wood, 1995).
W. J. Cash, in his book, The mind of
the South, (in Hall & Wood, 1995) wrote,
“the sole institution left to the South was
that of the evangelical church—the last link
holding the South together in the decades
following the (Civil) War” (p. 216). The
outreach of the Southern Baptists was and
still is enormous throughout the whole
Southern region of the United States.
The religious inclination of the
people, plus the conservative, agrarian
orthodoxy made the South one of the most
devout sections of Christendom with a more
homogeneous religious quality than any
other region in the United States (Ezell,
1975). This rigid theology, emotionalism,
and the emphasis on individual salvation
helped divert attention from the ills of post-
war society; further, religion was used to
justify social segregation.
Another Southern cultural tradition
that should not be ignored is the “Savage
Ideal” which was (and is) the dogged
resistance to change of any stripe, plus the
sanguine determination to fight all changes
to the existing order (Cash, 1941). The
fundamentalists had long chafed at the
heresy of Darwin. It was a social evil that
threatened their doctrinal answers to life.
The “Savage Ideal” and the Southern social
and political culture would fight to maintain
their status quo. The education of future
generations of Southern gentlemen was at
stake.
William Jennings Bryan—“The Great
Commoner”
Bryan led the crusade to exclude
Darwinian science from the public schools.
He was an activist on this issue long before
the Scopes Trial brought him to Dayton.
But, Bryan’s defeat in Dayton and his death
four days later brought the decline of
organized resistance to evolution. The high-
flying standards of parochialism were
lowered as most Southerners subsequently
accepted sophistication—and modern
science, and without really knowing it, the
Hamiltonian world view which exists to this
day, at least in the urban South.
Bryan supported the Butler Bill
(1925) in the Tennessee legislature that
established the law banning the teaching of
Darwinian Theory in Tennessee public
schools. This was the law that John T.
Scopes had violated. Fundamentalists turned
on tax supported education, as illiterates and
the semi-educated put pressure on their
legislators (at the instigation of their pastors)
to outlaw the teaching of evolution or face
the loss of the powerful rural vote (Ezell,
1975). The legislature was more than happy
to pass the bill by an overwhelming
majority.
Here begins the argument regarding
the rights of the state to direct the content of
the curriculum based on the political
implications of majority rule democracy. Do
the taxpayers have the right to determine the
curriculum content, or should it be left in the
hands of an elite group of professional
educators specifically trained in the process
of the administration of education including
developing the content of the curriculum
(Schubert, 1986)? This was an issue in 1925
and remains one today.
F. A. Hayek writes, “The next task is
to set up a new intellectual government
where only the competent scientists will be
allowed to decide the difficult social
questions” (1952, p. 353). Social
organizations from positivistic science—not
majoritarian democracy should rule.
4. Walter Lippmann would have agreed
with Hayek. And, like Hamilton, he was
suspicious of majoritarian democracy since
both Hayek and Lippmann reflect Kantian
and other philosophers that the apathetic
mass of the population are unable to discern
wisdom since they are not well educated,
well read or informed sufficiently to vote
intelligently, and as Hamilton would have
added, the uninformed masses are
vulnerable to the passions of demagoguery.
Lippmann called for a new system of
government entirely (Steel, 1980). He urged
liberals to accept once and for all the
limitations of democracy, something
Hamilton had called for all along.
Lippmann asked, “Does the
legislature have the power to declare what
and how people shall learn” (Steel, 1980, p.
217). Lippmann believed that the people of
Tennessee had wrongly used their power to
prevent their own children from learning;
“Guidance for the school system could come
only from educators” (p. 218).
William Jennings Bryan set himself
against this stream of thought. He held two
principles to be most fundamental in his
world-view: the power of majoritarian
democracy as an absolute and the absolute
inerrancy of the Bible as the literal word of
God. Further, he believed faithfully and
optimistically in the people and that they
(only the Christian majority) should rule
without qualification as to how or what they
should rule.
Bryan and fundamentalism drew
lines against modernism rather than just
science. Modernism was heresy.
Fundamentalist were opposed and answered
the call to arms to defeat the movement of
modernist thinking both in the churches and
in the schools, thus in society and the culture
of the South. Reform took two forms with
Bryan: personal reform through individual
religious faith and public reform through
majoritarian democratic governmental
action in its purest form (Larson, 1997).
Bryan was a classic Jeffersonian.
Bryan came to Dayton to defend the
power of local majorities to enact a law—his
law—to ban the teaching about human
evolution in public schools. Clarence
Darrow came to debunk fundamentalist
reliance on scripture as a source of
knowledge about nature suitable for setting
educational standards. Darrow stated, “We
have the purpose of preventing bigots and
ignoramuses from controlling the education
of the U.S.” (Larson, 1997, p.6). Hamilton
would have agreed on this point.
Richard Hofstadter quotes Bryan, “If
they believe evolution, they go back to scoff
at the religion of their parents; and the
parents have a right to say that no teacher
paid by their money shall rob their children
of faith in God and send them back to their
homes, skeptical, infidels, or agnostics, or
atheists—our purpose and our only purpose
is to vindicate the right of parents to guard
the religion of their children” (1962, p. 127).
Bryan was a layman who combined
in his person the two basic ancestral pieties
of the people—evangelical faith and
populist democracy (Hofstadter, 1962). In
his mind, faith and democracy converged in
a common anti-intellectualist rationale.
Where there appeared to be a conflict
between religion and science, it was the
public, Bryan believed, and not “those who
measure men by diplomas and college
degrees” who should decide” (p. 128). This
clearly reflects the Jeffersonian ideology of
Bryan.
This anti-intellectualism and anti-
elitism has its roots in the populist
movement which was primarily rural and
agrarian. Populism was a movement to
withstand the destructive and degenerative
effects of modern, industrial society on the
family, nation, race, and culture (Carto,
1982). Populism was a force for stability,
creating a tranquil society in which
individual and cultural growth can occur
without the progress being threatened or
5. exploited by alien cultures promoting
cultural distortions. This fit well with the
Southern culture of Christian gentlemen
living well in rural, agrarian community.
Bryan epitomized populist beliefs.
He was raised in populism and espoused the
rights of citizens in majority democracy and
the beliefs of his religion. He saw populism
as an authentic political heritage and as the
only social, economic, and political system
worthy of adoption (cite). Bryan fought
monopoly capitalism and economic royalism
and the encroachment of science even as he
participated in both. He was both a land
speculator in Florida and a member of the
American Association for the Advancement
of Science. Bryan was a living, breathing
example of undisciplined intellectual
paradox—and, the rural people loved him.
But, then interestingly enough, so was
Jefferson, who espoused one ideology of the
people in his writings and then practiced an
entirely different one, acting as an elitist,
when he was in power as President
(Kennedy, 2000).
Further, Bryan believed in the rights
of parents to prevent certain teachings;
“They (the elites) have no right to demand
pay for teaching that which the parents and
the taxpayers do not want taught. The hand
that writes the paycheck rules the school, not
the experts trained and qualified to do so.
William Jennings Bryan fought a
losing battle to hold the line against an
encroaching secular modernist world that
invaded his tradition-laden populism. His
“old time religion”could not keep pace with
the discoveries of science that continually
refuted biblical references as to how nature
worked. His followers were guided by
emotionalism and his detractors were guided
by reason. Once on the witness stand,
Clarence Darrow finished him.
Bryan took the stand as an expert
witness on both religion and science, yet he
was an undisciplined layman in both.
Neither his knowledge of science nor his
knowledge of the scriptures was adequate to
the task of expert. Darrow began to critically
discredit his “opinions” and made him look
like the “bigot and ignoramus” that Darrow
was there to defend Scopes against.
Although the case for the defendant
was lost, the case for religion was lost even
more.
According to Ezell (1975), “to those
who took their religion lightly, the reaction
was that God may not have made man out or
a monkey, but that Darrow did make a
monkey out of Bryan” (p. 352). Four days
after his disastrous testimony, Bryan died.
The Progressive Era: Science and Religion
Collide
“How has the process of science and
religion interacted to help shape American
culture—what has the impact of this
relationship been on the public school
curriculum?”(Gilbert, 1997, p. 3). How does
religion sustain itself at the center of
American culture in a largely secular
society? Part of the answer is implicit in the
dialectical interaction between science and
religion throughout the 20th
century. How
has religion and science engaged each other
as elements of American culture—not just
theories and theologies but also as everyday
ideas?
The age of scientific dominion began in
the late nineteenth century, during the
Progressive Era. In the developing
revolution of organization and order, science
in its various guises seemed a potent social
model for reforming society (Kanigel,
1997). Scientific method, the ethics and
practices of the scientific community, the
organization of laboratories, and scientific
societies, the scientific version of truth
telling, all appeared to offer the best chance,
as many Americans believed, for governing
the racing engine of technology and braking
the excessive speed of industrial change
(Pursell, 1995).
6. How could religion retrieve the soul of
America if its mind was enthralled by
science? If science offered a model of
organization and procedures that produced
real results and visible change (Kanigel,
1997); then religion either had to accept this
secular movement, offering an editorial
suggestion here and there, or dig in its heels
and resist; which is what it did at the Scopes
Trial. How could society return to the
emotional comforts of a Jeffersonian world?
The normative question remains today is
should they?
The increasing complexity of
modern science widened the wedge between
the scientists and the theologians. Science is
hard to understand which confers enormous
prestige and power on scientists which also
renders them susceptible to suspicion,
mistrust, and misunderstanding, especially
in a democratic society (Cohen, 1995;
Gilbert, 1997).
Early in the modern time of science,
it appeared that science was largely
consistent with biblical creation and
scientists found no need to challenge
religion (Armstrong, 1993; Cohen, 1995;
Gilbert, 1997; Newman, 1899; Solomon &
Higgins, 1996;). Later, after Darwin,
science began to directly contradict the
biblical story of creation. Implicit in
Darwin’s construction was a devastating
implication that denied the first principle of
Victorian religion. For Christians, human
beings are the special wards of creation, the
centerpiece of the universe, and the objects
of God’s perfect attention.
This assumption gives meaning to
soul and salvation. The Darwinian struggle
for survival contradicted prior
interpretations of the existence of life. Now
it was mere survival and reproduction. Man
was now suddenly very alone, and on his
own. This upset Bryan and his followers
greatly since they viewed God as love and
redemption with the promise of everlasting
life. To have this belief stripped away was a
major emotional trauma.
If humans were not the center of the
universe, then they had, in their hubris,
constructed a complex mythology to testify
to the ransom of nature and ward off the
night of self-doubt (Armstrong, 1993).
Neither science nor religion has had a stable
and permanent definition in American
culture. They continually shift in meaning
and in their relation to each other. These
tectonic plates create violent conflict as they
rub together. The curriculum of the public
school is often ground zero for these
reactions.
The distinctive element was the
difficulty of doing science and the elitism of
its practitioners. Science was not open to
amateurs and was not always verifiable in an
open democratic community—because most
people simply could not understand the
science of natural phenomena. This
argument was echoed by Lippmann.
However, religion was open to everyone, not
just the supposed “thinkers” as Bryan had
said (Hofstadter, 1962,).
As a model for social reform and
reorganization, science had once promised
the verification of experiment and
hypothesis through the approval of the
democratic community. But this pragmatic
ideal, on which John Dewey erected a host
of reforms faced the reality of a new science
that could be understood only by a narrow
circle of other scientists, who constituted its
community of verification. The journal
articles written by scientists mostly could
only be read by other scientists. This fact
alone began to define an elite minority who
would and could control the system.
And, according to I. Bernard Cohen
in his book Science and the founding fathers
(1995), science was much more than just a
hobby to the elite men of letters who led the
new republic including Thomas Jefferson,
Benjamin Franklin (for more than a century,
he was the only American named to
membership in both the Royal Society of
7. London and the Paris Academie Royale des
Sciences), John Adams and James Madison,
and others.
In 1943, Robert K. Merton (Popejoy,
1994) in his research on the sociology of
science argued that science itself did not
simply investigate natural phenomena and
develop descriptive hypotheses. Like other
forms of human knowledge, it too depended
on paradigms of theory and on changing
historical circumstances (as predicted by
Oliva (1993)—so goes curriculum).
Science appealed to experience and
generated hypotheses rooted in the natural
world, but it postponed truth with a series of
proximate descriptions. Religion also
evoked experience, but as illustrating what
was already known through faith or
experience that led to faith. Science moved
and evolved, whereas religion changed
primarily in order to restore and revive
ancient truths.
Religion is a system of knowing and
responding to what it defines as unknowable
and unapproachable. It constructs a
historical narrative in which human beings
are the central and principle purpose. To put
it simply—religion is anthropocentric and
science in naturalistic (Gilbert, 1997);
religion is deductive and physical science is
inductive (Newman, 1852).
Secularization has proceeded rapidly
in the twentieth century. The logic of the
mechanical now pervades the economic
world, and the hand of the market
mechanism has visibly penetrated and
transformed social and cultural institutions
as Hamilton predicted. Science, along with
its technological applications, defines the
future (Carter, 1993, 1998; Pursell, 1995;
Willis & Primack, 1989). Constructing an
ideal typology raises serious and important
problems of deciding what point to divide
secular from religious groups (Gilbert,
1997).
Like religion, the meaning of natural
science and scientific endeavor in modern
America has also undergone rapid evolution
—and science is what science does best. It
offers explanations of natural phenomena
capable of verification within a materialistic
framework. By definition, it defies the
intervention of deity in any explanation
(Newman, 1899).
Social science has intruded more
than any other branch of science into the
realm once held by religion. Social science
has secularized much of the sort of learning
and common wisdom that earlier American
society reserved for religious explanation.
Both religion and science depend on
pubic acceptance to retain its expression in
American life. Both require diffusion in
cultural and institutional practices. There
exists cultural space for religion in an
otherwise scientific world. American culture
dwells in paradox, tolerating and even
encouraging the coexistence of two very
different and potentially hostile systems of
explanation. Hamiltonianism defines the
operation of state systems of administration,
but does so clearly within the constraints of
a Jeffersonian ideology of democracy and
justice. Hamilton sought efficiency within a
modified representative democracy, not
totalitarianism by either a political
demagogue or a religious one—which may
be why America has never sent a pastor or a
priest to the White House.
American religion watches every
advance of science and assesses its impact.
This behavior exhibits the essential cultural
strategy of religious people: their refusal to
accept marginalization. The refusal to accept
a peripheral orbit helps account for the
aggressive resilience of American religion.
As Gilbert writes, “For this is the
way American culture is created: not by
isolated subcultures operating according to
their own rules in self-styled obscurity, but
by groups and individuals reacting to
questions…that they produce cultural
products that sometimes look, sound, and
feel different is no argument against the role
8. of the same central imperative: to find the
ideal relation between science and religion
in a society of immense flux.
The Conflict in Dayton
Although it is not the thesis here to
recreate the drama that was the Scopes Trial,
it is fundamental to understanding the
conflict to examine the “clash of titans” in
Dayton. To some extent, it was Clarence
Darrow against William Jennings Bryan; to
a larger concept, it was modernism against
populism with populism winning the battle
of the day, but modernism ultimately
winning the war—at least for the time until
we entered the postmodernist era. It was also
a battle for control of the curriculum which
was recognized as control for the minds of
future generations. Indeed, it was an
essential battle between Hamiltonian and
Jeffersonian world views.
It is important to understand, as well,
that the trial was a set-up by the
representatives of modernism. John Scopes
did not actually teach evolution, he merely
agreed to say that he would. The American
Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) was looking
for a test case to stem the tide of anti-
evolution laws that were cropping up
throughout the South. The trial had to be in
the heart of the “bible-belt” namely the rural
South. Dayton fit the bill nicely.
According to the public policy
agenda setting process model described by
both Dennis J. Palumbo (1994) and Mark E.
Rushefsky (1996), a dramatizing event must
be created by purpose or by accident to
galvanize the political will of the apathetic
masses to act in their legislative or judicial
capacity. This is exactly what Hamilton
feared about a pure open democracy. He
believed that stirring the passions of the
people could be dangerous to the union.
The Tennessee legislature had
enacted the Butler Bill in 1925, now the
ACLU challenged that law through their
judicial capacity. The end result would be
the impact on the subject-content of the
public school curriculum.
An interesting side note is that
Tennessee was a text book adoption state
and the text that Scopes was using was a
state adopted book. Didn’t the state officials
review the book before adoption—or did
they simply not understand what was in the
book? The book in question was George
William Hunter A Civic Biology which
summarized Darwin’s alternative
evolutionary mechanism in just one section
of the text. The book was adopted by the
state of Tennessee for their public high
schools more than a decade before the
Scopes Trial. So, each teacher had the
option to teach that section, just mention the
alternative view, or skip over it completely.
It may be noted also that Hunter
worked on his text as a teacher at New
York’s De Witt Clinton High School and
consulted with the faculty of the Teachers
College at Columbia University. The
Columbia University faculty included many
leading educators of the time and America’s
foremost geneticist, Thomas Hunt Morgan.
One of Hunter’s closest friends was then
earning a doctorate under Morgan at
Columbia. It was in this way, Darwin found
his way into Hunter’s textbook and diffused
into the minds of students in Dayton,
Tennessee.
What made the issue suddenly so
important that it became an international
spectacle? Two streams of events moved
toward each other in an unavoidable
collision course. During the years leading up
to the Scopes Trial, an outpouring of
academic books, articles, and essays
discussing the conflict between science and
religion with Darwinian Theory being the
focal point at the same time that Hunter’s
text was being used in the school system.
The other stream of the event was
the rapid increase of students attending high
school and being exposed to evolution
theory. Darwinianism was not a fighting
9. matter until it began to influence their
children’s education in the 1920’s. Christian
biologists could no longer step in as they
had earlier to soften evolution’s impact on
religious belief.
At the same time the high school
curriculum became more Darwinian, there
were more students that went to high school.
A critical mass of discontent was building;
the apathetic masses dissatisfaction was
building into a dramatizing event that would
place this issue on the American agenda.
The American high school system had
200,000 students in 1890, but had swelled to
over two million students by 1920. In
Tennessee, it was no exception; less than
10,000 students were in Tennessee high
schools in 1910; and by 1925, more than
50,000 students were attending high school.
High school was becoming what
college has become today—an essential step
in success for the next generation.
Progressive era school attendance laws and
free public education through high school
and the need for high school diplomas to
enter many new career fields and to gain
admission to college created the
groundswell of new students being exposed
to Darwin.
Governor Austin Peay of Tennessee
said in 1925, “High schools have sprung up
throughout the state, which are the pride of
their communities.” Dayton High School
was no exception. But, Dayton was as
Darrow called it, “the buckle of the bible
belt.” So, the die was cast for the conflict
over Darwin.
How important was this trial? The
ACLU didn’t pick Clarence Darrow at
random—he was the most famous defense
attorney of the era. William Jennings Bryan
was equally as great a name in representing
the agrarian populist agenda. These two
giant personalities alone would attract the
media attention that both sides eagerly
sought to galvanize the issue in the minds of
the public.
The trial attracted more than 200
journalists from around the world including
H.L. Mencken and Walter Lippmann. WGN
from Chicago covered the trial with what
had to be the first remote broadcast in the
century. Western Union sent more than 25
telegraphers to Dayton to handle the
overflow of information traffic going into
and out of Dayton’s small Western Union
office. When Bryan took the stand as the
state’s expert witness, the courtroom was so
full, the trial was moved outside for fear of
collapsing the floor of the courtroom.
The defense knew that they had no
defense. Scopes was clearly in violation of
state law, and the state had the right to set
that law by majoritarian democratic
methods. But, it was not Darrow’s or the
ACLU’s intention to win the case; rather, it
was their intention to focus national and
international attention on the irrational
foundations of Christian impact on
education. The trial was the dramatizing
event that agendized the issue. To make
Bryan look bad was to make the whole
religion dominated public education system
look bad. They had succeeded by the time
Bryan had finished his testimony. Scopes
paid a $100 fine and moved off into
obscurity.
The Aftermath
The epilogue of this issue is difficult
to determine since it seems to be an ongoing
conflict as religion continues to exercise
tremendous energy in influencing American
culture throughout the remainder of the 20th
century and into the early 21st
century.
Although the religious fervor of the time
was reduced as Southerners began to come
to grips with science and modernism, the
churches have always insisted on
maintaining their place in the firmament of
the American scene and continue to do so to
this day but to a greater or lesser degree than
before depending on which factors are being
analyzed.
10. The Jeffersonian ideology will likely
never fade entirely from the American
traditions of democracy and the culture of
freedom—and maybe we should hope it
never does. There will always be a strong
sense of community which is tied to the soil
even as a necessary modern Hamiltonian
administrative state manages an ever more
heterogeneously complex society.
Regardless of the immediate
outcomes and the long term consequences,
the Butler Bill was ultimately repealed.
Indeed, today the reverse seems to be the
case of the times: a new bill is needed to
allow the teaching of creation science in the
public schools. Opponents believe that
exposing students to creationism is violating
separation of church and state in the public
school curriculum. The elite experts of the
Hamiltonian state would be loath to
surrender their hard fought gains after
establishing their hegemony over who will
be making decisions in society.
To teach anywhere today in the
public school system, the educator must
have a degree in education (or the required
amount of credit hours in education), a
license or certificate issued by the state, and
must follow a detailed curriculum lesson
plan designed by the state with little
opportunity to deviate from the approved
plan. A Hamiltonian state victory was
complete.
Conclusion
The significant impacts of this
cultural conflict between religion and
science (Hamilton and Jefferson) often
revealed themselves in the curriculum
content of public education and who
controlled that content. That the curriculum
changed to reflect an anti-evolution crusade,
and changed again to reflect the force of
modernism, and apparently may change
again to allow an old voice with a new tune
to enter the schoolrooms of the next
generation.
For Dewey, the school would be the
agent of nature—benevolently shaping
souls. “The moral responsibility of the
school, and of those who conduct it, is to
society” (cite). The problem is what do
educators do when society is in flux—
undecided about what is good knowledge to
teach(Schubert, 1986)?
As James Q. Wilson wrote in The
moral sense (1993), “God is dead or silent,
reason suspect or defective, nature
meaningless or hostile. As a result, man is
adrift on an uncharted sea, left to find his
moral bearings with no compass and no pole
star, and so able to do little more than utter
personal preferences, bow to historical
necessity, or accept social conventions”
(p.5).
Hamilton would say that Wilson had
a point and this was why he was so opposed
to pure democracy. Society needs the
leadership of the learned—a selected elite.
He had a Darwinian view of selecting who is
best fit to serve in public office—leading
society in the right direction was too
important a mission to leave to chance.
More importantly Wilson wrote,
“But, the lives of most people are centered
around the enduring facts of human
existence, coping with family, establishing
relationships, and raising children.” This is
why education will be determined by an
elite group rather than Bryan’s majoritarian
democracy. The elite group has the luxury of
knowing what is important to know because
they have self-selected the task of learning
it.
As John I. Goodlad states in Klein
(1991, p. 16), “much of curriculum making
is a political activity—politicians are into
decisions educators thought were theirs to
make. Politicians, yet, follow the advice and
counsel of experts in writing their legislation
on any public matter (Palumbo, 1994;
Rushefsky, 1996).
Even today, in the public school
system, teachers are virtually powerless to
11. influence their curriculum content in any
meaningful way; and the university faculty,
those who ought to know and decide what to
teach future teachers, are rapidly losing their
power to determine the direction of the
university—the place the elite of the future
are to be taught. It is most likely that
Hamilton would have opposed this level of
state control. But, the logic of his ideology
can be extended all the way to state
domination over individualism and
communitarian values. It has already
occurred in public education.
William H. Schubert (1986, p.1)
asks, “What knowledge is most worthwhile?
Why is it worthwhile? How is it acquired or
created?” He later offers, “Curriculum in
any society or culture is and should be a
reflection of that culture. The job of
schooling is to produce salient knowledge
and values for the succeeding generation”
(p. 29). So, what has the state decided is
appropriate knowledge and values to teach?
In this view, it would seem that
Oliva’s second axiom is confirmed as the
clash of cultural imperatives between
science and religion was examined.
Ultimately, right or wrong, to the survivor
goes the power of determining the
curriculum content capable of influencing
the current culture for the “succeeding
generation” (cite). The Hamiltonian state
world-view prevailed. But, will society be
happy with the outcomes?
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