Kirjahaku

Teaching evolution in the public schools has been a perennial problem in America. From the courthouse in Dayton, Tennessee, in 1925, to modern fights over "intelligent design" and creation science, evolution and its critics have battled over the role of science and religion in American public life. But the antievolution controversies are not merely political problems. In American Genesis, Jeffrey P. Moran explores the ways in which the evolution struggles also have reverberated beyond the confines of legislatures and courthouses. In addition to offering a careful analysis of antievolutionism's ideological and strategic development, this wide-ranging social history argues that evolution's reception has been shaped by four peculiarly American forces: a diverse population, regional divisions, a sometimes shaky Protestant dominance, and a tradition of democratic populism. In each area, the battles over evolution exposed and polarized existing divisions. Using extensive research in newspapers, periodicals, and archives, Moran investigates the critical influence that gender ideals have had in antievolutionism, as well as the complex role women play in modern controversies. Similarly, he analyzes the unexamined relationship between African Americans and antievolution. Moran's reading of regional differences explains how fundamentalism, a movement born in the North, came to flourish primarily in the South. Throughout the nation, Moran argues, antievolutionist ideology has retained strong continuities from its roots in the early twentieth century, despite its modern packaging as creation science or Intelligent Design. Finally, Moran balances scholars' understandable focus on the unfamiliar territory of antievolutionism by considering the self-conceptions and preconceptions of modern scientists as activists, teachers, and bystanders in the struggle.

Sex education, since its advent at the dawn of the twentieth century, has provoked the hopes and fears of generations of parents, educators, politicians, and reformers. On its success or failure seems to hinge the moral fate of the nation and its future citizens. But whether we argue over condom distribution to teenagers or the use of an anti-abortion curriculum in high schools, we rarely question the basic premise—that adolescents need to be educated about sex. How did we come to expect the public schools to manage our children’s sexuality? More important, what is it about the adolescent that arouses so much anxiety among adults?Teaching Sex travels back over the past century to trace the emergence of the “sexual adolescent” and the evolution of the schools’ efforts to teach sex to this captive pupil. Jeffrey Moran takes us on a fascinating ride through America’s sexual mores: from a time when young men were warned about the crippling effects of masturbation, to the belief that schools could and should train adolescents in proper courtship and parenting techniques, to the reemergence of sexual abstention brought by the AIDS crisis. We see how the political and moral anxieties of each era found their way into sex education curricula, reflecting the priorities of the elders more than the concerns of the young.Moran illuminates the aspirations and limits of sex education and the ability of public authority to shape private behavior. More than a critique of public health policy, Teaching Sex is a broad cultural inquiry into America’s understanding of adolescence, sexual morality, and social reform.