A netfriend writes:

Before the scopes trial was the question of origins taught in US public Schools? This was a question my sixteen year old granddaughter chose to do a research paper on for extra credits. This was one of about a half dozen topics she could have selected. She has been searching old text books, interviewing people who graduated prior to ’25 without any real success. It seems that scopes was the first teacher to breach the subject of origins. According to her even before the 50s she has found nothing regarding origins. Anyone have any suggestions where she might look?

Ken Smith:

Try the series of books by Stephen Jay Gould, starting with “Ever Since Darwin” and finishing with “I Have Landed”.

Many of these have articles about creationism and the history of the movement.

One of the essays (sorry, I can’t remember which book it’s in) is entitled “Moon, Man and Otto” (from memory).

Moon was the author of a biology textbook. and Gould mentions changes in some of the editions.

There is the magisterial book by Ronald Numbers “The Creationists”, which deals with the history of the movement, but I don’t think he pays much attention to school textbooks.

Salaam Ken Smith