Historical Thinking Matters asks us to consider how the Scopes trial was about more than just creationism and evolution. I think the fact that, in the multiple times I have encountered this topic in my academic career, I have never once been given the straight-forwards historical details about the case and have rather been asked to engage in it through abstract academic analysis, the stage, cinema, and historical fiction shows that history never meant for it to exist inside itself from the get-go. Not knowing the concrete story makes it a bit harder to initially understand, especially when one is asked to repeatedly engage in outside interpretations of it like Historical Thinking Matters that remove the student further and further from the event, but it simultaneously makes it much easier to recognize the larger issues the Scopes Trial exhibited in American discourse. These issues include the transition from tradition into modernity and from absolutism to skepticism, the reaffirmation of the seperation of church and society, and the triumph of rationality over mysticism. Scholars, Larson included, consistently juxtapose the discourse of Darrow and Burroughs to drive this point home. By examining the differences between their rhetoric and the legitimacy of their sources, the bumbling nature of Burrough’s and the even-paced, mathematically logical approach of Clarence Darrow, we can even hear the triumph of a new era in our examination of this event. This is a topic I would definitely like further explore later on, perhaps in class?
As a lover of history, it is personally a bit frustrating to engage with an event the way Historical Thinking Matters asks us to. I enjoy the tiny, directly-related details of stories, and the fact that we are always asked to engage in the Scopes trial indirectly, through outside commentary, always makes it seem rather unreal to me. But, at the same time, I do understand that the trial wasn’t something that happened organically, it was created and positioned so that these discussions could be had, makes me understand the need for this sort of approach. It fits in nicely with the interdisciplinary approach we use in American Studies.
So how does Larson’s text fit into the broader context of the course? It, perhaps even more explicitly than Smoot, drives home the point that Americans need to be able to decide for themselves in order to be “American”. On page six, the author tells us that Darrow’s efforts were all aimed to “publicly debunk fundamentalist reliance on scripture as a source of knowledge about nature suitable for setting education standards.” The rationality of human reasoning, which can only be located internally and on an individual basis, has to be developed on one’s own, and that can’t occur if knowledge, especially “scientific” knowledge is purposefully excluded from their development. If the “backwards” institution of religion is allowed to interfere with that, Americans will be kept from developing towards the zenith of millennial perfection we discussed earlier in the course.
Thoughts I am still developing: It’s not so much about what’s being taught in this context, is more about the active refusal to teach something. All the ideas aren’t being presented, it’s not fair, it’s selective information, so you can’t be fully enlightened in this school system, and thus fit for citizenship, because a) you aren’t getting all the info and b) this is supposed to be a fair society.