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The Textbook Controversy in Tennessee (1986-10-10)
About this film
The case being referred to as Scopes II had been set in motion three years earlier, when Vicki Frost protested against some of the textbooks being used in her daughter's school. The controversy attracted national constituencies on both sides: Mr. Farris was backed by the Concerned Women for America, an anti-secularist lobby, and Mr. Dyk was backed by Norman Lear's People for the American Way. To the plaintiffs, the "open-ended" questions used in the so-called "character education curriculum" are perniciously relativistic; to the defense, as Mr. Dyk puts it, "I think the beliefs are sincere, but I also think they're very, very broad beliefs and they're fundamentally inconsistent not only with the values of public education but with the skills that public education is trying to teach." An illuminating look at a deep division within our society.
Directors & creators
Southern Educational Communications Association
Subjects
public broadcasting, AAPB, William F. Buckley Jr., Vicki Frost, Farris, Dyk, Norman Lear, Concerned Women for America, People for the American Way, Scopes II, Tennessee, textbook controversy, censorship in education, character education, secularism, public education, religion in schools
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