Here’s how creationists have creatively tried to undermine the teachings of evolution in America’s classrooms since the Scopes trial in 1925

Bans on teaching evolution prevailed … until high school teacher Susan Epperson took on Arkansas’ version [in the 1960s] As Science News wryly noted, “Typically, Arkansas teachers skip [evolution] chapters or tell their students it is illegal to read them, thereby assuring that they will be read.” In 1968, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the law as unconstitutional.

In the 1970s and ’80s, the aim became adding the “science” of creationism — the biblical belief that the universe and all life were created by God — to school curricula.  

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In the 2000s, creationism returned to the classroom under a new guise, intelligent design. “That viewpoint holds, among other things, that organisms are too structurally and biochemically complex to have arisen only in accordance with natural forces,” Science Newsexplained in 2006. The creator was left unsaid, but a federal judge still ruled that intelligent design was religion.

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Today, several states have laws that define academic freedom as being able to teach scientific controversies, allowing the discussion of intelligent design and doubts about the theory of evolution.

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