I had a frustrating experience in public high school because of the teaching of evolution, but it wasn't in biology class. My literature class read through
Inherit the Wind and then watched the film as part of our agnostic teacher's seeming agenda for Romanticism and anything non-Classical. And, somehow, due to my supposed acting skills and/or my unofficial appointment as the class's "Bible spokesman" (perhaps more so the latter?), I was assigned the play role of Clarence Darrow's representation in this little reader theater, while my teacher played William Jennings Bryan's representation, despite my refusal to say the four-letter words in the script.
Last month was the 88th anniversary of the historic trial that inspired
Inherit the Wind, and Joe Carter posted some
historical facts about the embarrassing trial that got mostly ignored in the trial's subsequent skewed and caricatured re-tellings.
Sadly, it's one of many significant and culture-defining stories of the past that will likely spend centuries misunderstood because social media kitsch and popular film hold more sway on our common understanding than academia. (I
wrote about this earlier). Why read books about history when you can watch movies?
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