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I think personal identity depends in part on the state. Texas and California seem to be much stronger identifiers than say, Indiana or Iowa. I'd think of it more as neighborhoods within a city. They're all more or less equal, but there are nice areas that people are proud to be from, and also barrios that people are proud to be from (New Jersey comes to mind). The middle seems to get lost somewhere -- I suppose there is less neighborhood pride in the average states.
As for teaching creationism in school, there are some school districts in the United States that have tried to teach it, but at this point, the federal government has never allowed it. As for the thing in Tennessee that your teacher was talking about, I'm guessing it's the Scopes Trial.
| quote: | | The "Scopes Trial" (Scopes v. State, 152 Tenn. 424, 278 S.W. 57 (Tenn. 1925), often called the "Scopes Monkey Trial") pitted lawyers William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow against each other (the latter representing teacher John T. Scopes) in an American court case that tested a law passed on March 13, 1925, which forbade the teaching, in any state-funded educational establishment in Tennessee, of "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." This is often interpreted as meaning that the law forbade the teaching of any aspect of the theory of evolution. John Scopes, a high school teacher, was arrested for teaching evolution from Darwin's Origin's -Of Species. |
(Wikipedia.org)
Scopes was found guilty, meaning that he was not allowed to teach evolution. But note the date (1925). Since then, this case has more or less been overturned, and the opposite is pretty much true. Now it is illegal to teach creationism and standard to teach evolution.
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