From that shining beacon of local government, the District of Columbia:
A Washington, D.C. teacher who sent home violent, morbid and traumatizing math problems to third graders from Center City Public Charter School’s Trinidad campus has been fired, WUSA-TV reports….
Two of the problems, courtesy of the station:
#2. My 3 friends and I were caught and tied up by 1023 screaming cannibals in a jungle last night. Soon we were feeling terribly itchy because of the mosquitoes. We begged the cannibals to scratch us. 219 cannibals refused because they were busy cutting vegetables. The rest of them, however, surrounded us in equal numbers and began to scratch us with their teeth, just like dogs. It felt good! How many cannibals scratched me?
#4. John’s father gave him 1359 marbles on his birthday. John swallowed 585 marbles and died. 9 of John’s friends came for his funeral the next day. John’s grieving father gave the remaining marbles to John’s friends in equal numbers. How many marbles did each friend get?
Others include story lines about baking humans in ovens, and a child waking up screaming after thousands of fire ants made a nest in the subject’s brain.
Education ‘reformers’ keep saying that tests are an integral part of assessing poor performance by teachers, but it’s usually pretty clear when a teacher isn’t doing his job well. Talking about baking people in ovens is usually a clue something might be amiss.
And, Intelligent Designer, I would love to see the VAM scores….
mikethemadbiologist
Is there any chance this was a Halloween test? Or is it representative of tests from this instructor. Also I’m not sure how morbid math problems “condone” violence. Possibly we just had a really creative teacher here who needed some mentoring. For my part I struggled terribly with boredom in school. This, when you are trying to learn, is not a trivial problem. I’m just sayin’ it might not be quite so obvious that firing him was the right response.
I’m sorry, but this isn’t a clear cut case. I would have found those questions hilarious as a kid.
It sounds like you would have locked up the Grimm brothers.
As far as I can tell, neither the school nor the parents thought this was appropriate for seven to eight year old kids. Don’t know how I would have reacted at that age.
They might need to check the library then. That’s the demographic for RL Stine novels.
As a 12-14yr old kid I would have loved these problems and asked for more of the same! As an 8yr old…I’m not so sure.
Stick to the Brothers Grimm. 😉