Creationism and the U.S.

A craziness difficult to understand for Europeans

A scientist looking back on his life and his work on his 100th birthday reveals some genuine problems of someEnglish speaking countries regarding the history of life

Science magazine on July 2nd published an article by Ernst Mayr, written on his 100th birthday. Mayr is a giant both in evolutionary theory and in the writing of the history of evolutionary theory. Mayr reflects that he isn't really clear on when exactly he became an evolutionist. In the gymnasium he attended evolution was taken for granted. He received all of his education including his Ph. D. in Germany. Like many of the world's best evolutionists he wound up teaching in the U.S.. So why is evolution and creationism still such a big issue there?

In the early 1900s most industrialized countries implemented mass public educational systems under central government control. Much of the motivation involved the need for economies to be internationally competitive. But in the U.S. there wasn't the same sense of competitive urgency. Additionally, since the Civil War in the 1860s "States Rights" issues have had a major base of support in the South. As a result the U.S. developed an almost completely decentralized educational system, independently administered by each individual state. While European countries were developing standardized nation-wide teaching practices and curriculum standards the U.S. did not. Creationists have both supported the decentralization as well as exploited it.

As with the racial segregation of schools up through the 1960s, creationism also has tended to be strongest in the states of the Civil War South, though it is by no means restricted to there! However, I know of no one from the South who learned about evolution in school before college. Teachers are often subtly (and not too subtly) discouraged from even mentioning evolution. So with schools teaching around evolution and many churches actively arguing against evolution many students only ever hear creationist arguments.

In the past creationists tried to pass laws forbidding the teaching of evolution, such as in the 1925 "Scopes Monkey Trial", one of the most famous trials of the 20th century. Scopes taught biology using a book that included a discussion of evolution. At first he was convicted but on appeal the case was decided on a technicality instead of constitutional grounds. (In 1968 the Supreme Court finally ruled that laws forbidding the teaching of evolution are unconstitutional).

Within the United States the Deep South has the poorest standardized test scores. Among industrialized nations the U.S. consistently ranks toward the bottom on most scales, even while spending more than average.

Education is often listed in public polls as one of the top presidential campaign issues. Presidential candidates usually try to portray themselves as being for educational-reform. When they can they refer to programs they enacted while governors. But once elected to the presidency nothing substantial happens. The sad political reality is the forces against change are organized, and the forces for reform are unorganized.

Governmental institutions run by locally-elected officials are highly susceptible to influence by special interest groups. The most relevant interest groups here include construction companies, teacher unions, textbook companies, and creationists. Local construction companies use their political influence to win lucrative contracts. Teacher unions, like state and municipal unions generally, are among the most successful unions today. As opposed to national-level government unions such as postal workers and air traffic controllers.

Textbook companies sell different textbooks in different states it's big business. The tragic result usually has been textbooks of incredibly low quality, like described by Richard Feynman and later published as a chapter in his autobiographical book "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!". And, of course, the creationists. As part of the political "religious right" they have in recent decades exerted considerable influence as when Reagan made a campaign promise to abolished the federal Department of Education. All of these political forces work toward keeping the educational system decentralized, over-ruling the widely-held public sense of badly needed reform, and resulting in creationism as a persistent issue in the United States.

Many people often underestimate creationists. The most recent creationist spin is intelligent design theory, which is mostly being argued for at the level of the universities. For the latest on these issues I recommend the just-published book Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design by Barbara Forrest and Paul R. Gross. Harvard professor Edward O. Wilson says it is "...the definitive work on modern creationism".

I find myself wondering... if Mayr had grown up in the United States would he have even gone into biology ?!

Richard Harper studied evolution at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and was a member of the Center for Evolutionary Psychology

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