Butler Act

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The Butler Act was a controversial law in the US state of Tennessee that went into effect on March 13, 1925 and repealed on September 1, 1967, prohibiting teachers from all or part of the offense on penalty of fines between $ 100 and $ 500 Tennessee state-funded educational institutions to teach any theory that humans are not of divine origin, as taught in the Bible , but of a lower order of animals. The law was named after the farmer John Washington Butler, who, according to his own admission , wanted to prevent the teaching of evolutionary theories , which he held responsible for disobedience by children.

background

Charles Darwin's theory of evolution was taught without restrictions in most U.S. schools and universities until 1925, when John Washington Butler, a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives, spoke out in favor of banning the teaching of evolution in all educational institutions in the state. Hence the law passed on March 13, 1925, was named the Butler Act after him. The controversy between opponents and supporters of this law lasted for over 40 years, until it was repealed in 1967 on a complaint by a teacher that it restricted the freedom of speech guaranteed in the United States in the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution . Since then, the theory of evolution has been allowed to be fully dealt with in schools again.

Butler Act 1925

According to the wording of the law, it would have been legal to teach that monkeys are unicellular, to teach the mechanisms of variation and natural selection, or to teach the prevailing scientific theories about geology and the age of the earth. Nor did it require teaching the story of creation. It was only forbidden to teach that man descended from a lower species, or to teach other theories according to which God, as described in Genesis , did not create man. Teachers who violated this rule were fined $ 100 to $ 500.

The ape trial (officially Tennessee vs. Scopes) of July 1925 was at the fore of controversy between supporters and opponents . The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) encouraged teacher John Thomas Scopes to break the law to bring it down in court . Scopes was charged and fined $ 100, but was later acquitted of formal misconduct in the Tennessee Supreme Court. Proponents of the law were able to get their way, but Scopes gained widespread public recognition and approval. Several attempts have been made to reverse this law. In 1951, for example, a proposal to repeal the law was rejected, and in 1961 a corresponding proposal by the House of Representatives in Tennessee was overruled.

Butler Act 1944

In addition to the Butler Act of Tennessee, there was a law in England in 1944, which was also known as "The Butler Act" or "The Butler Education Act". It was a reform bill to the UK education system that aimed to provide secondary education to all children. It was named after the Chairman of the Board of Directors for Education Richard 'Rab' Butler.

literature

To Tennessee
  • Mary Lee Settle: The Scopes trial. The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes. F. Watts New York around 1972, ISBN 0-531-02027-4 .
  • Mano Singham's: God vs. Darwin. The war between evolution and creationism in the classroom. Rowan & Littlefield Education, Lanham 2009, ISBN 978-1-607-09169-1 .
To England
  • Albert Victor Murray: The school and the church, the theory & practice of Christian education under the Butler act. SCM Press, London 1944, OCLC 563057125 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Doug Lindner: John Washington Butler (English) at the University of Missouri, 2004.
  2. ^ Legal texts (English) at the University of Missouri
  3. ↑ On March 13, 1925, a law was passed in Tennessee that forbade teaching Darwin's theory of evolution in schools and universities. from Tagesanzeiger.ch, accessed on August 28, 2014.
  4. ^ House Bill No. 185 - Butler Act on tennessee.gov, accessed August 28, 2014. (PDF)
  5. ↑ A Monkey on Tennessee's Back: The Scopes Trial in Dayton. on tennessee.gov, accessed August 28, 2014.
  6. ↑ Matthias Kuzina: The American court film. Justice, ideology, drama. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2000, ISBN 3-525-20793-X , p. 295.
  7. ^ The Butler Act at nationalarchives.gov.uk, accessed August 28, 2014.
  8. ↑ Rab Butler's 1944 act brings free secondary education for all on bbc.co.uk, accessed on August 28, 2014.