This day in history: Spokane school officials outraged over teaching evolution; Whitworth class questions traditional gender roles

From 1974: Whitworth College was offering a new and startling course titled “Sexual Identity and the Development of Human Potential.”

According to one of the students enrolled in the course, the course “has clarified some sex roles and broken down others.”

“I don’t want a traditional marriage,” said one woman. “But I will have a family someday – maybe. In the past, a woman had only one option, marry Mr. Right and settle down. Today there are many other roads open.”

One of the teachers agreed.

“It would be nice to see fathers foster close relationships with their children,” the teacher said. “This means baths, changing diapers and all the other things that a mother is ‘supposed to do.’ ”

A male student “unashamedly predicts that in five years he could be a part-time househusband.”

“I used to think a man should be tough,” he said. “This is not only limiting for me, but it’s wrong.”

He said some of his friends think he has been “brainwashed.”

From 1924: Several of the attendees at a county school directors association meeting wanted the “rot” of evolution cut out of the texts in public schools.

“Some persons are proud to defend the doctrine that their ancestors were chattering monkeys and pitched coconuts while they were evolving, but county school directors do not see zoo exhibits in their family trees,” The Spokesman-Review said.

The argument was injected into a “previously calm” discussion of textbooks. The issue caused a heated debate, but no resolutions were passed.

Meanwhile C.W. Cahill, who led the county school directors, had another concern about material in schools: “The thing that I am opposed to is the Grimm fairy tale stuff. You can pick up the readers and they are full of those old stories. I would suggest that we have Indian folk lore and the like which might be used. Also history stuff that would answer the purpose and prove more enlightening.”