1. Teaching Objectives
2. Video Watching: Scopes Monkey Trial
3. Background Information of the Trial that Rock the World
Answer the following questions according to the video Scopes Monkey Trial.
1. Who are the two of century’s greatest attorneys in the Scope trial?
2. When did the Scope trial happen?
3. Why did John Scopes, a biology teacher, was arrested?
Key:
1. Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan
2. May 25, in 1925
3. He was arrested for teaching evolution in defiance of Tennessee state law
Discussion: What are the major causes of the Monkey Trial in America?
Key:
The struggles were in fact struggles between religion and science, ignorance and wisdom.
1) The case was neither isolated nor accidental, but was a result of the clash between the fundamentalists and the modernists. Fundamentalists, who believed in a literal interpretation of the Bible, locked into Darwin and the theory of evolution as "the most present threat to the truth they were sure they alone possessed". The modernists accepted Darwin’s theory of evolution. Viewing evolution as the enemy, fundamentalists set out to eradicate it from their society, beginning with the education system.
2) The trial also escalated the political and legal conflict between strict creationists and scientists.
That showed the spread of science and truth was no easy task．The purpose of the essay is to draw the world’s attention to the Evolution Theory and persuade people not to be stubbornly hostile to science.
