TeachingRE Issue 4.pdf - the Second Level Support Service

Are We Missing Something Here?1000 million million people is more people than have ever existed in the entire history of the human race.And wehaven’t even looked at the person sitting beside you! 2000 years ago, there were only 300 million people estimatedto be alive. Could we all be related this closely? The answer is yes. What brings the Maths back in line with thehistorical reality is that you only need to go back 8 to 20 generations to find a common ancestor with anybody inyour native country. Unless of course, you are of a certain noble stock. Steve Jones again, on aristocratic family trees.Alfonso, the Infante of Spain, who died in the 1960s, had just twelve – rather than more than a hundred – ancestors sevengenerations back. King Alfonso XII, a contemporary of Darwin, had sixteen, while plenty of others in that noble line hadbetween fifteen and twenty great-great-great-great-grandparents.It is truly a revelation for the vast majority of students to discover these truths, and to uncover them with the helpof some simple calculations. It can then be readily extended into formulae and terminology.• You are the first person (term), and this is denoted as a = 1• Each previous generation requires a doubling of the population (r = 2)• Formulae: Tn = ar n-1 and Sn =a (r n - 1)r - 1• Get students to make their own questions by choosing a value for a and r and finding the values for, say T2 andT6. They then give these terms to their partner and vice versa. (Go to our Homepage and scroll down toStudents Creating Questions on Senior Cycle Topics).• Now tell them about the Fibonacci Sequence of Numbers (1,1,2,3,5,8,…) and his thought experiment regardingthe growth in the population of rabbits. It’s only a short leap from Fibonacci to the Golden Mean.Some related Outcomes from the LCRE syllabus:• Give 2 examples from contemporary culture that illustrate the human search for meaning. Examples may betaken from music, art, literature, or youth culture. (Section A, p 13)• Briefly outline 2 cosmologies of modern science (Section A, p 15)• Outline the relationship between the understanding of the transcendent/God and the concept of the personin 2 religious traditions (Section A, p19)• Explain the human drive to question and to ask why (Section J, p97)• Give examples of the questions common to religion and science (Section J, p97)• Outline Darwin’s theory of evolution, and highlight the major areas of conflict with religion (Section J, p 99)• Describe the reaction of one major world religion to Darwin’s theory at the time of its development(Section J, p99)• Explain the importance of reflecting on and studying origins (Section J, p102)• Give a summary of the main features of current debate on origins (Section J, p102)TEACHING RELIGIOUS EDUCATION ISSUE FOUR SEPTEMBER 2009 49