Jaxlarv, 1929 



EVOLUTION 



Page Nine 



The Text Book Hoax 



An expose of ihe hypocrisy beliind the publication of biology text books 

 By BARROW LYONS 



UP to the present, no serious attempt 

 has been made in Arkansas to keep 

 the dictionaries out of the schools, which 

 make perfectl.v plain the basic idea of 

 evolution. Yet the influence of the Fund- 

 amentalists has made itself felt quite 

 enough. Even before the Scopes trial thej' 

 had succeeded in impressing their blight 

 upon the authors of biology text books 

 through bringing pressure to bear upon 

 the members of text book commissions. 



Usually the gentlemen on these commis- 

 sions, being good natured, accomodating 

 and particularly anxious to keep out of 

 unpleasant controversies involving relig- 

 ious prejudices make no very stirring effort 

 in behalf of science. They take the easiest 

 path and adopt texts certain not to get 

 them into trouble with the arch trouble- 

 makers. 



An interesting example of modification 

 in text book making is furnished in the 

 volume entitled Biology and Human H'el- 

 fare published by The Macmillan Com- 

 pany in 1914. The joint authors of this 

 book were James Edward Peabody, head 

 of the department of biology at Morris 

 High School, New York City, and Arthur 

 Ellsworth Hunt, head of the department 

 of biology at Manual Training High 

 School, Brooklyn. In their preface they 

 say: 



"The field of biology is so large and 

 some of its problems are so difficult that 

 a wise selection of topics must be made if 

 a text is to attain its maximum usefulness. 

 Consequently, some topics that are often 

 found in secondary school texts, but are 

 more suitable for discussion in advanced 

 courses, have been omitted. Among these 

 may be mentioned Mendel's laws, theories 

 of evolution and mitosis." 



There is a footnote to the word evolu- 

 tion, which reads: 



" 'The prominent evidences of relation- 

 ship suggesting evolution, within such 

 groups as the decapods, the insects and 

 the vertebrates, should be demonstrated. A 

 few facts indicating the struggle for ex- 

 istence, adaptation to environment, varia- 

 tions of individuals, and man's selective 

 influence should be pointed out; but the 

 factors of evolution and the discussion of 

 its theories should not be attempted.' — 

 Quoted from the syllabus in advanced zoo- 

 logi,- published by the College Entrance 

 Examination Board and the New York 

 State Department of Education (1921). 

 This syllabus is based upon the report of 

 a committee of the American Society of 

 Zoologists, Eastern Branch." 



Dr. Peabody has been criticized as giv- 

 ing the impression that the American 

 Society of Zoologists, Eastern Branch, in- 

 tended that the facts of evolution should 

 be left out of elementary and secondary 

 school texts, but the real intention of the 

 zoologists was merely to suggest that a 



detailed discussion of evolution was some- 

 what beyond the grasp of most high 

 school students. 



Mr. Peabody's argument, moreover, 

 seems somewhat lame when one compares 

 the text of his earlier book. Elementary 

 Biology written in collaboration with Mr. 

 Hunt in 1912, in which the grounds upon 

 which a belief in evolution is based is set 

 forth very clearly. There seems to be 

 nothing beyond the grasp of high school 

 students in the following excerpt taken 

 from page 114: 



''We have seen in our study thus far (1) 

 that no two individual plants even of the 

 same kind are exactly alike, (2) that 

 enormous numbers of seeds are produced 

 by plants, and (3) that there is inevitable 

 competition or struggle for existence. The 

 question, then, that confronts us is this: 

 Which of the many competitors will sur- 

 vive in the struggle, reach maturity, and 

 finally reproduce themselves? Obviously 

 those individual plants that vary from the 

 rest in such a way that they can best 

 adapt themselves to their surroundings." 



Here is rank Darwinian heresy stricken 

 from the pages of the later book. And this: 



"Not only can man secure new varieties 

 of plants by watching for iavorable varia- 

 tions and perpetuating them from year to 

 year, but he can actually be instrumental 

 in producing new kinds of plants, the pro- 

 cess is known as plant breeding." 



The text book commission of Texas has 

 gotten around the difficulty nicely by 

 changing the word evolution to develop- 

 ment. This is illustrated in the text book 

 entitled New Biology published in 1924 

 by AUyn and Bacon, the authors of which 

 were \V. M. Smallwood, of Syracuse 

 University; Ida L. Reveley, of Wells Col- 

 lege, and Guy A. Bailey, of Geneseo State 

 Normal School. 



Apparently there were two editions in 

 1924. The text on page 156 is slightly dif- 

 ferent in each. In one text, under the 

 caption "Evolution," appears the following: 



''The same study of the tadpole also il- 

 lustrates how animals may gradually have 

 come to live on land, and suggests a nat- 

 ural explanation for the origin of land 

 vertebrates." 



In the other text, under the caption 

 "Development," the book reads: 



"This same study of the tadpole also 

 illustrates how animals, which for a long 

 time may have lived in the water, could 

 gradually come to live on land." 



It is a fine point, but it seems to have 

 satisfied the Fundamentalists of Texas. 

 The original edition, it is understood, is 

 used for consumption by Northern school 

 children, while the elimination of the word 

 evolution made it fit for little Fundamen- 

 talists. 



Commenting upon this situation a mem- 

 ber of one of the larger text book publish- 



ing firms explained: 



"A good many of the members of state 

 text book commissions are not themselves 

 anti-evolutionists, but they must listen to 

 the Fundamentalist preachers, who al- 

 though very much in the minority, con- 

 trol large slices of public opinion. The 

 commissions in so7ne states have found that 

 by leaving out the word evolution, that 

 most of the subject matter ordinarily 

 taught under evolution can be left in the 

 texts. Probably most of the Fundamental- 

 ists themselves are not very clear as to 

 what evolution means. Pictures which il- 

 lustrate the subject seem to irritate them 

 more than the texts." 



It is to the credit of Ginn and Com- 

 pany that it has republished in its 1928 

 edition of Dr. Benjamin C. Gruenberg's 

 Elementary Biology the chapter on Appli- 

 cations and Theories of Evolution, which 

 were originally published in the book; but 

 the firm also insisted upon having a book 

 by the same author in which the word 

 evolution should be omitted, even if the 

 facts be camouflaged under other names. 



''I was asked to do the same thing Pea- 

 body and Hunt had done," Dr. Gruenberg 

 told me. ''It appeared to me at first a 

 stultification to comply. A publisher has 

 no right to impose on the author criteria 

 from a specific point of view arbitrarily, 

 even if it seems expedient. I went into 

 the woods, to my study at Lake George, to 

 think the matter over. I decided to put 

 the question of using the word evolution 

 in the background and write a book, re- 

 considering my problem as I came up 

 against it in the book. The final outcome 

 was that I finished the book and hadn't 

 mentioned evolution anywhere. I went 

 over the work carefully. Outside of ex- 

 plicit mention of evolution and a discus- 

 sion of the various theories, it was the 

 same biology as I taught and had written. 



"There are to be found in the Southern 

 states and certain parts of the Middle 

 West, whole populations a generation be- 

 hind those one finds in our large cities 

 and rn Europe. Is it better that the chil- 

 dren in the backwoods have no book at 

 all? To me it was a problem of taking 

 the world as one finds it, which most of 

 us must do if we want to play with it at 

 all." 



A similar thought was expressed by a 

 publisher, who like the others quoted, in- 

 sisted that his words remain anonymous. 



"Every farmer in the United States be- 

 lieves in evolution," he declared. ''Talk 

 with him for fifteen minutes and you can 

 convince him that the improvement of live 

 stock and plants is based entirely upon its 

 laws. 



"I think it exceedingly important tliat 

 the social significance of evolutionary 

 principles be thoroughly understood, yet I 

 cannot print text books that mention or 

 discuss evolutionary principles. It isn't 

 because I haven't the nerve, but because I 

 have creditors. To them a fearless stand 

 for the truth would simply mean courting 

 (he possibility of losing business, and my 



