Evolution Controversy
During the Cold War in 1957 the Soviet Union successfully launched the first Earth orbiting artificial satellite, Sputnik I. The event triggered alarm in United States by heightening fears there that the Soviet Union were achieving technological and strategic superiority. One response to what the Americans termed the Sputnik crisis was to invest money and expertise towards a re-invigoration of the country's science and technological educational system. It was during this period the BSCS was engaged to develop updated high school biology textbooks. The biology texts they developed covered evolutionary theory, which was by this time overwhelmingly accepted as biology's central organizing principle.
These books became widely used in the nation's high schools, and as a consequence, the public controversy about the teaching of evolution in public schools re-ignited. After a 1968 Supreme Court decision nullified decades old laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution in many places of the country, some evolution opponents turned their efforts against the public funding of evolutionary teaching, including publicly funded textbooks. The BSCS textbooks were featured in the 1973 case Willoughby v. Stever, a suit filed by an evangelical opponent of evolution who attempted, and failed, to have the evolution instruction in the textbook legally recognized as an unconstitutional establishment of religious secularism. The case was dismissed as meritless, and was cited as legal precedent in other groundbreaking decisions in the American cultural battle over evolution in the schools.
Read more about this topic: Biological Sciences Curriculum Study
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