In 1914, George William Hunter’s A Civic Biology, the book later used in biology courses in Dayton, Tenn., was published. A Civic Biology describes evolution as “the belief that simple forms of life on the earth slowly and gradually gave rise to those more complex and that thus ultimately the most complex forms came into existence.”

The creation of “civic biology” curricula in the late 1910’s and early 20’s, spearheaded by a close-knit community of textbook authors, brought evolution into the high school classroom as part of a complete reshaping of “biology” as a school subject.

It also incorporated progressive ideologies about the purposes of compulsory public education in shaping society, and civic biology was fundamentally focused on the applications of the life sciences to human life.