These lines didn’t come from a gory vampire novel
bent on turning our innards inside out. Nope, not at all. Guess what? They’re a
math problem. For elementary pupils. In third grade. It turned out that these and a
number of other math problems containing some violent and illegal topics were
downloaded by a teacher online for a class. The teacher was fired.
I was
horrified when I read the article. I am a college teacher and the idea of
elementary school children being exposed to these types of materials in school
alarmed me. ‘There is already enough violence in the outside world; do they
have to be exposed to it in school too?’ I thought. I immediately assumed that
if kids were exposed to enough violence in their everyday lives, their future
is placed in jeopardy and the chances become higher of their growing up and
having the same violent tendencies that they were exposed to.
I
visited the site where the math problems were downloaded. The content had been
taken down and replaced by an article written by the site owner who made the
math problems. After reading his article, I understood his side a bit and what
he was trying to achieve with those unusual math problems.
From his
point of view, math has been a constant headache for elementary school teachers
(even college, I tell you) because it has two elements that children hate: it’s
boring and it’s hard. So he tried to make the first fun so that even if the
subject was hard, it would still be enjoyable. And there is no denying that
children like gross and gory stuff. Just take a look at all the cartoons and
movies nowadays.
So I’m
thinking, there has to be some middle ground. School authorities do not approve
of those kinds of materials but children love them. How do we make these two
meet?
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