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‘What should be taught in schools?’: the infamous ‘Scopes monkey trial’ turns 100

In 1925, a Tennessee battle over teaching evolution in schools gripped the US and, as festivities commemorate the chaos, the case remains grimly relevantHer great-grandfather was a doctor called to attend to the lawyer who put the case for creationism. Her great-grandmother was related to Charles Darwin. And now she works in the courthouse where the “trial of the century” – in which a high school teacher was accused of illegally teaching evolution – began exactly a century ago on Thursday.No one has a perspective on the “Scopes monkey trial” quite like Pat Guffey, a former high school biology teacher in Dayton, Tennessee. As the city prepares to mark the centenary with a week-long festival including a dramatic re-enactment of the court battle, she is aware how its legacy proved both a blessing and a curse. Continue reading...

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