Curriculum

 

I found this page in the 1923 version of The Nicolet, Menasha High's yearbook.  I was taken by the phrase, "civic biology," which aroused my curiosity. 

 

As it turns out, "civic biology" was the shorthand term for a curriculum based on A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems, a biology textbook written by George William Hunter, published in 1914. From what I've read, it was a nationally known book, used in school districts all over the country in the early 20th century. 

It is the book which Tennessee required high school teachers to use and is best known for its section about evolution that was ruled by a local court to be in violation of the state Butler Act.  The Butler Act was a Tennessee law which prohibited public school teachers from denying the Biblical account of man's origin. It was for teaching from this textbook that John T. Scopes was brought to trial in Dayton, Tennessee in the famous Scopes "Monkey" Trial pitting William Jennings Bryan against Clarence Darrow.

If things had been different and Menashans had been a bit more intolerant, who knows?  We might have been thrust into the national spotlight instead of the small town of Dayton, Tennessee.