From Sept 2001:
Here’s Wikipedia on McLean v. Arkansas:
A lawsuit was filed in theUnited States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas by various parents, religious groups and organizations, biologists, and others who argued that the Arkansas state law known as the Balanced Treatment for Creation-Science and Evolution-Science Act (Act 590), which mandated the teaching of “creation science” in Arkansas public schools, was unconstitutional because it violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Judge William Overton handed down a decision on January 5, 1982, giving a clear, specific definition of science as a basis for ruling that creation science is religion and is simply not science. The ruling was not binding on schools outside the Eastern District of Arkansas but had considerable influence on subsequent rulings on the teaching of creationism.
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I’m so very glad to have grown up in Arkansas during and immediately following Clinton’s tenure as Governor (and before Huckabee had much of a chance to do much damage). I remember being shaken awoke by learning of this case in the mid-1990s as an important tangent in both my European History and U.S. Government and Bureaucracy course.
At the time, Creation Science seemed to be entering public discourse in a big way for the first time since I’d become aware enough of politics to notice. It shook me to my core to recognize that the conflict had been raging at least back to this case, which took place when I was still learning how to roll over and crawl on my own. That recognition was as thrilling as it was frightening, because most kids growing up with a brainy bent recognize the pseudo-religious tendencies of the state’s population–I grew up on a street with seven separate denominational churches spaced along a half mile.
If nothing else, this was the case and the moment that I mentally became an adult, recognizing that not only did I not know everything, but I wasn’t being told everything (by grown-ups) in the best interests of my own education. I give thanks for the stellar teachers who had the foresight to keep this issue in full view, years after it had faded from newsworthiness.
Many thanks for posting. It’s worth revisiting and sharing with tweens across the country.