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One Little, Two Little . . . Ten Little Indians

I'm torn on this one.

Innovative Teacher Uses DNA Test To Teach History Lesson (check out the video, if you're interested)

I'm a proponent of teachers using DNA tests to help kids grasp genetics and/or history -- and I applaud this fellow's initiative -- but this is the line that made me think twice:

"I found out that I was 10 percent Native American, out of my last 100 ancestors, and that was a complete shock to me," said Lincoln.

That quote tells me that Mr. Lincoln doesn't understand genetic genealogy or the specific test he had his students take. They apparently took DNA Print's BioGeographical test (aka AncestryByDNA). It's a fun test, but folks tend to take the results as absolute and they're not. And I have no clue where he got the "100 ancestors" bit. That seems to suggest that the test somehow samples your ancestors going back 5 generations, but arbitrarily stops at the 38th ancestor (out of 64) in that 5th generation.

Anyway, kudos to Mr. Lincoln for doing the testing and getting his students interested, but here's hoping he does a little studying before doing the same with next year's class!

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on January 12, 2007 5:16 PM.

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