About a year ago I had a very interesting conversation. I was volunteering at the White Plains Hospital at the time and was talking to my Supervisor, Carol. I was taking inventory and filling out some paperwork and we started talking. She started explaining how she thought that evolution was no longer taught in school and how creation was now the accepted model in science. Mind you this was only one year ago and from my experiences and my knowledge the opposite was true. What really shocked me was that she was teaching sixth grade science. Was a new generation of students following the opinions of woman over what was accepted in society? The separation of church and state was being attacked at the lowest level with most impressionable minds. I was deeply troubled by this but I could not figure it out until the topic of the Scopes trial came up in my American History class. I finally realized what I had just experiences was the scopes trial in reverse. I felt offended that someone was putting their personal view over mine, offended that I could have been taught someone's personal opinion over actual fact. I was offended that this teacher was going against society in what she was teaching. Most of all I was offended that I was acting the same way religious people were in the early 1900's.
A wide array of forces combined to cause the trial of the century. In March of 1925 the state of Tennessee passed a law preventing theories that went against the accepted view of human creation portrayed in Genesis. While it is a popular belief to make John Scopes into a hero by saying he stood up to unjust laws, that would be a gross oversimplification. As with most things in this life, the trial had its origins in monetary gain. The recently created ACLU (American Civil Liberty Union) placed ads in the newspapers saying that it would provide legal support to any teacher that would stand up against the Butler laws.