The author explores the evolution/creation conflict and suggests what educators might do to fulfill their responsibilities with the least offense to the religious beliefs of creationists and with respect for students' right to understand their Western scientific heritage. The paper begins with a history of the confict between creationists and…

People for the American Way, a civil liberties organization that monitors censorship, found fundamentalists more active, better organized, more emboldened, and more sophisticated in their censorship attacks. They are increasingly intimidating school boards, and their focused harassment has increasingly frightened publishers into removing…

This paper discusses the historical background of the creationist movement, presents Federal Judge Overton's analysis of why and how the Creationists got the equal time evolution/creation teaching law passed in Arkansas, and examines how scientists and educators are reacting to the controversy. Creationists were set back when Overton declared…

Historical background to Arkansas Act 590, mandating inclusion of creationism in public school curriculum, is given, including the history of antievolution bills, emergence of textbook watchers, and political issues in the law's passage. Suggestions are given for elementary and secondary teachers to become informed and active regarding…

This paper describes the lives and contributions of George Peabody and his nephew Othniel Charles Marsh. Marsh influenced his uncle's gifts to science and science education, particularly in the founding of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology at Harvard, the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale, and the Peabody Academy of Science,…

The New Christian Right (NCR) has long wanted to impose fundamentalist Christian virtues and values on the United States. This paper discusses fundamentalist movements since the Scopes trial and assesses their impact on public school education. The NCR holds that traditional God-centered Christianity has been replaced in U.S. society and schools…

This paper traces the past and recent controversy concerning the teaching of evolution/creation in the schools. The first section of the paper discusses the opposition of Christian fundamentalists to evolution, going back to Charles Darwin's 1859 "Origin of Species." Covered also are science curriculum revisions following Sputnik, up to the 1981…

Reviews the activities of the New Christian Right (NCR) related to teaching evolution in the public schools. Describes the effects of legislation and court litigation on the NCR's efforts to eliminate secular humanism from textbooks. Provides an NCR definition of secular humanism. (LS)