Adam Laats
Biographic Data
| ID | 190438 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Adam Laats |
| GIVEN NAMES | Adam |
| FAMILY NAME | Laats |
| SIGNATURE | LAATS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Binghamton University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1717-7983 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 17 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 7 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
SCOTUS, Schools, and History
In recent years, justices on the US Supreme Court have made explicit historical arguments about US schools in order to promote a broader role for religion in US public schools. For example, in Espinoza v. Montana (2020), Chief Justice Roberts cited the late historian Carl F. Kaestle to buttress his arguments, but did so in a way that misrepresented Kaestle’s nuanced account. This article compares the justices’ historical arguments to the best evi…
Policy Dialogue on Twenty-First-Century Book Banning in the US
Book banning is a topic covered in many US history classrooms. Students learn that in the first decades of the twentieth century, fights over the teaching of evolution led to restrictions on science texts. Meanwhile, fears about the spread of communism sparked campaigns to limit access to “subversive” ideas. Well into the 1960s, textbooks usually explain, Americans remained at odds about what schools should be free to teach. What’s old is new, it…
An eternal monkey trial? Evolution and creationism in U.S. schools
When it comes to creationism, it might seem as if the United States is trapped in a century-long culture-war rut. In a sense, the Scopes Trial of 1925 put science itself on trial, and it can seem as if every new dispute over teaching evolution is only a repetition of that famous trial. In truth, however, the power of creationism has ebbed dramatically over the past 100 years. Adam Laats examines the history of creationist activism and describes t…
A history of technological hype
Education leaders frequently turn to technological solutions to improve schools, often without evidence of their effectiveness. According to Victoria Cain and Adam Laats, this pattern of leaders pouring money into new technological systems and then being disappointed in the results goes back centuries. They describe how, in the early 1800s, Lancastrian schoolrooms captured the public imagination and how, in the 1950s and ‘60s, were seen as a solu…
Creationism USA: Bridging the Impasse on Teaching Evolution
Fundamentalist U
Why do so many conservative politicians flock to the campuses of Liberty University, Wheaton College, and Bob Jones University? In Fundamentalist U: Keeping the Faith in American Higher Education , Adam Laats shows that these colleges have always been more than just schools; they have been vital intellectual citadels in America’s culture wars. These unique institutions have defined what it has meant to be an evangelical and have reshaped the land…
“I Came to Be Went With”
Even more than most colleges, fundamentalist schools between the 1920s and 1950s tried hard to supervise student behavior. With strict rules against drinking, smoking, and sexual relationships, many institutions found enforcement to be a challenge. This was especially true in the realm of sexuality and dating. Students, families, and the institutions themselves often viewed college as the proper place to meet potential marriage partners. Evangeli…
In the Beginning: Keeping the faith in American higher education
During the 1920s, fundamentalists founded their own network of dissenting institutions. No longer able to control public or denominational colleges, activists opened new schools such as Bryan University, Dallas Theological Seminary, and Des Moines University. At the time, it was not clear exactly what those new schools hoped to accomplish, since the meanings of fundamentalism itself were hotly debated. Fundamentalism was often considered a loose,…
Robert Daniel Rubin. Judicial Review and American Conservatism: Christianity, Public Education, and the Federal Courts in the Reagan Era
In the mid-1980s, Judge W. Brevard Hand of the District Court for the Southern District of Alabama issued two startling decisions that raised difficult questions for a generation of scholars and activists. First, how can an activist judge oppose judicial activism? Second, can a non-religion function as a state-established religion? And, finally, why should two district court cases warrant so much attention from historians, pundits, and armchair l…
Civil Rights, Culture Wars: The Fight over a Mississippi Textbook
What history should schools teach? Who should decide? And how? These questions have always been central to the United States's tumultuous culture wars. With Civil Rights, Culture Wars, Charles W. Eagles offers a valuable new exploration of one twentieth-century battle over these questions. Eagles's book examines the career of a controversial new state-history textbook in 1970s Mississippi. The sociologist James Loewen and historian Charles Sallis…
Dissenters, Not Ignoramuses: A New Approach to Creationism in America's Public Schools
Additional informationNotes on contributorsAdam LaatsAdam Laats is associate professor of education and history at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He specializes in the history of educational culture wars in the United States. Along with philosopher Harvey Siegel, he is coauthor of an upcoming book, tentatively titled Teaching Evolution in a Creation Nation: Historical and Philosophic Perspectives on Evolution Education. He i…
Teaching Children Science: Hands-On Nature Study in North America, 1890-1930
Our Schools, Our Country: American Evangelicals, Public Schools, and the Supreme Court Decisions of 1962 and 1963
American evangelicals have long maintained a tense and paradoxical relationship to mainstream American culture. This article explores the effect of the 1962 and 1963 United States Supreme Court school decisions on that perennial tension. Unlike many conservatives, conservative evangelicals greeted the court's 1962 Engel decision to ban state‐written prayer in public schools with cautious approval; however, evangelicals saw the 1963 Schempp decisi…
Red Schoolhouse, Burning Cross: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and Educational Reform
On a hot afternoon in July 1923, former Dallas dentist and national Ku Klux Klan leader Hiram Evans took the podium at the first annual national meeting of the revived organization. By the time of this meeting, the Klan had again become infamous for its reputation of intolerance and vigilante violence. It had also become enormously popular among native-born white Protestants. In states such as Indiana and Colorado, the Klan briefly seized control…
Fundamentalism and Education in the Scopes Era: God, Darwin, and the Roots of America's Culture Wars
This book takes a new look at one of the most contentious periods in American history. The battles over schools that surrounded the famous Scopes "monkey" trial in 1925 were about much more than evolu
Forging a Fundamentalist “One Best System”: Struggles Over Curriculum and Educational Philosophy for Christian Day Schools, 1970–1989
No introductions were necessary. By the time of this meeting on May 2, 1972, all of the educators around the table had worked together in the tightly knit community of Protestant fundamentalist education for decades. Those close relationships, however, only made the meeting's confrontational agenda all the more awkward and tense. Beka Horton read the charges. Horton, with her husband Arlin, had founded a thriving fundamentalist school in Pensacol…
The Quiet Crusade: Moody Bible Institute's Outreach to Public Schools and the Mainstrearning of Appalachia, 1921-66
In 1921, William Norton of the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago pushed, pulled, and dragged his Model T along the back roads of the southern Appalachians. He visited churches, schools, and private homes, talking with anyone and everyone he could find. His question was always the same: "Do you have enough Bibles?" The answers he received shocked him. As far as Norton could tell, many of the "mountaineers" were nominally Christian, but they had oft…
Teaching Children Science: Hands-On Nature Study in North America, 1890-1930
Our Schools, Our Country: American Evangelicals, Public Schools, and the Supreme Court Decisions of 1962 and 1963
American evangelicals have long maintained a tense and paradoxical relationship to mainstream American culture. This article explores the effect of the 1962 and 1963 United States Supreme Court school decisions on that perennial tension. Unlike many conservatives, conservative evangelicals greeted the court's 1962 Engel decision to ban state‐written prayer in public schools with cautious approval; however, evangelicals saw the 1963 Schempp decisi…
Red Schoolhouse, Burning Cross: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and Educational Reform
On a hot afternoon in July 1923, former Dallas dentist and national Ku Klux Klan leader Hiram Evans took the podium at the first annual national meeting of the revived organization. By the time of this meeting, the Klan had again become infamous for its reputation of intolerance and vigilante violence. It had also become enormously popular among native-born white Protestants. In states such as Indiana and Colorado, the Klan briefly seized control…
Policy Dialogue on Twenty-First-Century Book Banning in the US
Book banning is a topic covered in many US history classrooms. Students learn that in the first decades of the twentieth century, fights over the teaching of evolution led to restrictions on science texts. Meanwhile, fears about the spread of communism sparked campaigns to limit access to “subversive” ideas. Well into the 1960s, textbooks usually explain, Americans remained at odds about what schools should be free to teach. What’s old is new, it…
The Quiet Crusade: Moody Bible Institute's Outreach to Public Schools and the Mainstrearning of Appalachia, 1921-66
In 1921, William Norton of the Moody Bible Institute of Chicago pushed, pulled, and dragged his Model T along the back roads of the southern Appalachians. He visited churches, schools, and private homes, talking with anyone and everyone he could find. His question was always the same: "Do you have enough Bibles?" The answers he received shocked him. As far as Norton could tell, many of the "mountaineers" were nominally Christian, but they had oft…
Fundamentalism and Education in the Scopes Era: God, Darwin, and the Roots of America's Culture Wars
This book takes a new look at one of the most contentious periods in American history. The battles over schools that surrounded the famous Scopes "monkey" trial in 1925 were about much more than evolu
Forging a Fundamentalist “One Best System”: Struggles Over Curriculum and Educational Philosophy for Christian Day Schools, 1970–1989
No introductions were necessary. By the time of this meeting on May 2, 1972, all of the educators around the table had worked together in the tightly knit community of Protestant fundamentalist education for decades. Those close relationships, however, only made the meeting's confrontational agenda all the more awkward and tense. Beka Horton read the charges. Horton, with her husband Arlin, had founded a thriving fundamentalist school in Pensacol…
Our Schools, Our Country: American Evangelicals, Public Schools, and the Supreme Court Decisions of 1962 and 1963
American evangelicals have long maintained a tense and paradoxical relationship to mainstream American culture. This article explores the effect of the 1962 and 1963 United States Supreme Court school decisions on that perennial tension. Unlike many conservatives, conservative evangelicals greeted the court's 1962 Engel decision to ban state‐written prayer in public schools with cautious approval; however, evangelicals saw the 1963 Schempp decisi…
Red Schoolhouse, Burning Cross: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and Educational Reform
On a hot afternoon in July 1923, former Dallas dentist and national Ku Klux Klan leader Hiram Evans took the podium at the first annual national meeting of the revived organization. By the time of this meeting, the Klan had again become infamous for its reputation of intolerance and vigilante violence. It had also become enormously popular among native-born white Protestants. In states such as Indiana and Colorado, the Klan briefly seized control…
Teaching Children Science: Hands-On Nature Study in North America, 1890-1930
Dissenters, Not Ignoramuses: A New Approach to Creationism in America's Public Schools
Additional informationNotes on contributorsAdam LaatsAdam Laats is associate professor of education and history at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He specializes in the history of educational culture wars in the United States. Along with philosopher Harvey Siegel, he is coauthor of an upcoming book, tentatively titled Teaching Evolution in a Creation Nation: Historical and Philosophic Perspectives on Evolution Education. He i…
Fundamentalist U
Why do so many conservative politicians flock to the campuses of Liberty University, Wheaton College, and Bob Jones University? In Fundamentalist U: Keeping the Faith in American Higher Education , Adam Laats shows that these colleges have always been more than just schools; they have been vital intellectual citadels in America’s culture wars. These unique institutions have defined what it has meant to be an evangelical and have reshaped the land…
“I Came to Be Went With”
Even more than most colleges, fundamentalist schools between the 1920s and 1950s tried hard to supervise student behavior. With strict rules against drinking, smoking, and sexual relationships, many institutions found enforcement to be a challenge. This was especially true in the realm of sexuality and dating. Students, families, and the institutions themselves often viewed college as the proper place to meet potential marriage partners. Evangeli…
In the Beginning: Keeping the faith in American higher education
During the 1920s, fundamentalists founded their own network of dissenting institutions. No longer able to control public or denominational colleges, activists opened new schools such as Bryan University, Dallas Theological Seminary, and Des Moines University. At the time, it was not clear exactly what those new schools hoped to accomplish, since the meanings of fundamentalism itself were hotly debated. Fundamentalism was often considered a loose,…
Robert Daniel Rubin. Judicial Review and American Conservatism: Christianity, Public Education, and the Federal Courts in the Reagan Era
In the mid-1980s, Judge W. Brevard Hand of the District Court for the Southern District of Alabama issued two startling decisions that raised difficult questions for a generation of scholars and activists. First, how can an activist judge oppose judicial activism? Second, can a non-religion function as a state-established religion? And, finally, why should two district court cases warrant so much attention from historians, pundits, and armchair l…
Civil Rights, Culture Wars: The Fight over a Mississippi Textbook
What history should schools teach? Who should decide? And how? These questions have always been central to the United States's tumultuous culture wars. With Civil Rights, Culture Wars, Charles W. Eagles offers a valuable new exploration of one twentieth-century battle over these questions. Eagles's book examines the career of a controversial new state-history textbook in 1970s Mississippi. The sociologist James Loewen and historian Charles Sallis…
Creationism USA: Bridging the Impasse on Teaching Evolution
An eternal monkey trial? Evolution and creationism in U.S. schools
When it comes to creationism, it might seem as if the United States is trapped in a century-long culture-war rut. In a sense, the Scopes Trial of 1925 put science itself on trial, and it can seem as if every new dispute over teaching evolution is only a repetition of that famous trial. In truth, however, the power of creationism has ebbed dramatically over the past 100 years. Adam Laats examines the history of creationist activism and describes t…
A history of technological hype
Education leaders frequently turn to technological solutions to improve schools, often without evidence of their effectiveness. According to Victoria Cain and Adam Laats, this pattern of leaders pouring money into new technological systems and then being disappointed in the results goes back centuries. They describe how, in the early 1800s, Lancastrian schoolrooms captured the public imagination and how, in the 1950s and ‘60s, were seen as a solu…
SCOTUS, Schools, and History
In recent years, justices on the US Supreme Court have made explicit historical arguments about US schools in order to promote a broader role for religion in US public schools. For example, in Espinoza v. Montana (2020), Chief Justice Roberts cited the late historian Carl F. Kaestle to buttress his arguments, but did so in a way that misrepresented Kaestle’s nuanced account. This article compares the justices’ historical arguments to the best evi…
Policy Dialogue on Twenty-First-Century Book Banning in the US
Book banning is a topic covered in many US history classrooms. Students learn that in the first decades of the twentieth century, fights over the teaching of evolution led to restrictions on science texts. Meanwhile, fears about the spread of communism sparked campaigns to limit access to “subversive” ideas. Well into the 1960s, textbooks usually explain, Americans remained at odds about what schools should be free to teach. What’s old is new, it…
Sociology (13 works) · Political science (12 works) · Law (10 works) · History (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Race, History, and American Society (6 works) · Religious studies (6 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (4 works) · Religious Studies (4 works)