Carl Woese causes a tempest in the blogosphere: don’t teach evolution to the lower grades?

February 25, 2008 – 12:04 am by William Wallace

Microbiologist Carl Woese has come out against the teaching of evolution in the lower grades and instead recommended that it be taught in college.

My feeling is that evolution shouldn’t be taught at the lower grades. You don’t teach quantum mechanics in the grade schools.—Carl Woese (Keim 2008)

This is intriguing, and I agree, but for different reasons, and with some caveats. Most who strongly advocate teaching the Theory of Evolution (T.o.E.) in secondary schools seem to be motivated out of a hatred for Christianity. This is certainly self-evidently true with vociferous evolutionists. In any event, without macro-evolution, we have plenty to teach in biology.

Steve Murphey, M.D., disagrees with Woese, and writes at his blog:

Just because we don’t teach quantum mechanics in grade school doesn’t mean we shouldn’t.—Steve Murphey M.D. (Murphey 2008)

I disagree with Dr. Murphey. Nobody is using quantum mechanics as a weapon against religion, at least not to the extent that evolutionists do. Also, the public education guild and teacher licensure requirements make it very difficult for those who know the subject to become teachers. Steve Murphey, even with his M.D., would not be allowed to teach in public schools in my state at the secondary level unless he navigated a number of frustrating bureaucratic hurdles at personal expense for a huge reduction in pay. If a bright high school student wants to learn about advanced ideas such as modern physics, it is much easier to let advanced students attend a local college while in high school. Meanwhile, public school teachers can continue to focus their attention on the tail end of the bell curve (i.e., “no child left behind.”)

Other thoughts from the blogosphere:

Woese’s proposal surely will raise the ire of many scientists and teachers alike. And while I disagree strongly with his conclusion, I am sympathetic to the frustration apparent in his premise.—T.R. Ryan (Ryan 2008)

I am also sympathetic, but due to my own frustration. Boisterous evolutionists want unscientific coincidence theories of evolution to be taught and dumbed down not for those theories’ explanatory powers, but for their obfuscatory powers vis-à-vis religion. From the time of Darwin, evolutionists such as T.H. Huxley have been the ones picking fights with religion.

Biology today is no more fully understood in principle than physics was century or so ago. In both cases the guiding vision has (or had) reached its end, and in both, a new, deeper, more invigorating representation of reality is (or was) called for.—Carl Woese (Woese 2004)

So much for the theory of evolution being on par with the Law of Gravity. (Whether or not Carl Woese ever disavowed the above words I have not fully investigated, but it seems doubtful. Even so, teams of devout evolutionists are investigating subsequent Woese statements in preparation for “quote mine” allegations.)

Sources

©2008 William Wallace / Coincidence Theories. Corrections welcome.

  1. 10 Responses to “Carl Woese causes a tempest in the blogosphere: don’t teach evolution to the lower grades?”

  2. I found your blog on google and read a few of your other posts. I just added you to my Google News Reader. Keep up the good work. Look forward to reading more from you in the future.

    Robert Michel

    By Robert Michel on Feb 25, 2008

  3. I agree that the subject, taught at a cursory level can lead to confusion. So we should fix that barrier, not avoid the journey.
    -Steve
    http://www.helixhealth.org

    By Steven Murphy M.D. on Feb 25, 2008

  4. “Whether or not Carl Woese ever disavowed the above words I have not fully investigated, but it seems doubtful. ”

    ie William couldn’t even be bothered to read the rest of the paper. There is nothing to disavow.

    Woese says just later
    “it was in the 19th century that biology really came of age; consolidating itself, ridding itself of much of its ancient burden of mystical claptrap, and defining the great biological problems:”

    It appears that William Wallace is still burdened with mystical claptrap and willign to lie to preserve it.

    By Paul M. on Feb 27, 2008

  5. “Most who strongly advocate teaching the Theory of Evolution (T.o.E.) in secondary schools seem to be motivated out of a hatred for Christianity.”

    I would have to disagree with you. I teach biology in a Catholic High School with a strong theme of evolution throughout the course. There is no hatred for Christianity.

    I agree that the mechanics of evolution may be too complex for lower grade school students, but see nothing wrong with the discussion of evolution, common descent, etc at this level.

    By Harry Gregory on Feb 27, 2008

  6. Harry Gregory, thanks for stopping by. By “lower grade” I think Carl Woese included high school students, but I could be wrong. Even so, as a teacher at a private school, you are probably much more qualified and knowledgeable, and so capable of correctly teaching evolution to high school students.

    By William Wallace on Feb 27, 2008

  7. Wallace wrote: “Most who strongly advocate teaching the Theory of Evolution (T.o.E.) in secondary schools seem to be motivated out of a hatred for Christianity.”

    That my friend seems to be a foolish accusation. In fact, many Christian denominations have accepted the fact of evolution and see no problem with teaching the theory(ies) of evolution as it is a foundational principle of biology. Perhaps a better statement would be that some people reject the teaching of good science because of their religious faith. That is a far more accurate statement I believe

    By PvM on Mar 2, 2008

  8. Ten Years ago, Woese remarked

    –
    The status of biological instruction, especially in the high schools, disturbs Woese. “Biology is poorly taught in general at the high school level,” he says, referring to the polarization of evolution by the scientifically heterodox. “Scientifically, the matter is simple. The essence of biology is evolution, and biology should be taught from an evolutionary perspective. Yet, although evolution is covered to some extent in high school biology courses, it bears the scarlet letter and is taught in a guarded fashion, embalmed in caveats. The reason for this is obvious, as are the pressures on textbook publishers.”

    Woese removes himself from the “politically cathected” evolution vs. creationism issue. “I like my science pure. I don’t see any fundamental contradiction between science in the big view and religion in the big view.”
    –

    Woese may be discouraged that his ‘revolutionary’ ideas about evolutionary theory were never accepted in the mainstream but that hardly seems a good reason not to teach evolutionary theory and the fact of evolution at all relevant levels of education.

    Woese has some interesting ideas which are certainly worth pursuing such as his community idea in which life formed one or several big communities in which horizontal gene transfer played an important role. This community phase was then following by a Darwinian phase until modern days.

    A good paper by Woese is “A New Biology for a New Century”
    http://mmbr.asm.org/cgi/content/full/68/2/173

    Although there are some minor errors

    –One needs look no further than the “doctrine of common descent” to find a candidate; common descent is something that essentially all modern biologists have taken for granted. Where did this doctrine come from? Why, Darwin, of course: didn’t he say that all life stems from a single primordial form? Indeed he did.–

    Nope, he actually allowed for one or several primordial forms. But regardless, the principle of common ancestry may lead to some confusion as to what it means when there are one or few common community forms which freely share genetic information.

    ID proponents seem to have misunderstood much of Woese’s arguments and Woese is not amused

    –
    Woese scoffs at Meyer’s claim when I call to ask him about the paper. “To say that my criticism of Darwinists says that evolutionists have no clothes,” Woese says, “is like saying that Einstein is criticizing Newton, therefore Newtonian physics is wrong.” Debates about evolution’s mechanisms, he continues, don’t amount to challenges to the theory. And intelligent design “is not science. It makes no predictions and doesn’t offer any explanation whatsoever, except for ‘God did it.’”
    —

    Source: http://pharyngula.org/index/weblog/comments/the_sanctimonious_bombast_of_george_gilder/

    See also my contribution at pt http://www.pandasthumb.org/archives/2004/09/icons-of-id-car.html

    By PvM on Mar 2, 2008

  9. Perhaps, rather than not teaching evolutionary theory in high school or before, we should focus on why so many people still have such a flawed understanding of science in general (”x is just a theory”) or evolutionary theory in particular (no transitional fossils, improbable, evolution is a random process, etc) ?

    Some excellent resources are being provided by a variety of sources

    1. Evolution: Education and Outreach http://www.springer.com/life+sci/journal/12052 (free online access in 2007/2008) with lesson plans

    2. Nova Evolution: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/

    3. NAS http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/evolution98/ and http://www.nationalacademies.org/evolution/

    There are some excellent resources which can be used to introduce our children to the scientific fact and theory(ies) of evolution. What is stopping us?

    By PvM on Mar 2, 2008

  10. There is nothing wrong with “X is just a theory”.

    As I will be writing about in the future (though it has been delayed), Nova is probably not a good source for information on biology or evolution controversies.

    Some science is much better than other, and you seem to be trying to hang evolution on the coattail of hard sciences like physics. But find me a physicist who goes apoplectic because somebody else says “general relativity is just a theory”. I suspect you will be hard pressed, because physics is not a religion to physicists.

    By William Wallace on Mar 2, 2008

  11. –There is nothing wrong with “X is just a theory”.–

    When people think that a theory is just a hunch then there is a lot wrong

    –As I will be writing about in the future (though it has been delayed), Nova is probably not a good source for information on biology or evolution controversies.–

    You seem to believe that there IS a controversy. Perhaps that is the reason for your delay.

    –Some science is much better than other, and you seem to be trying to hang evolution on the coattail of hard sciences like physics. But find me a physicist who goes apoplectic because somebody else says “general relativity is just a theory”. I suspect you will be hard pressed, because physics is not a religion to physicists.–

    Neither is evolution. So perhaps there is another reason why scientists object to the ignorance shown in Florida by some ill informed creationists who do not understand the concept of theory.

    Understanding the history of ignorance when it comes to evolution is an important factor in understanding creationist activities. That’s too bad…

    So far Nova has turned out to be an excellent resource for teachers, educators and students both about the scientific theory of evolution as well as how Intelligent Design was placed on trial and found to be what it really is; a religious motivated attempt and a vacuous scientific concept.

    Thank God.

    By PvM on Mar 3, 2008

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