Teacher Fired For Giving Extremely Morbid, Traumatizing Math Problems To D.C. Third Graders (VIDEO) (DOCUMENT)

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.

(Scroll for full math worksheet)

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.

"I was absolutely distressed," Center City PCS CEO Beverley Wheeler told WUSA. "It doesn't follow anything we do. We are about character, excellence and service and I found them to be violent and racist."

After the station broke the story in a previous report, the school responded with the following statement:

"Thank you so much for bringing this to our attention. Center City PCS does not condone violence. We take this issue seriously and are looking into why these problems might have been sent home to the Third Grade students on our Trinidad Campus. The Singapore Math textbooks we use in our schools do not have any math problems of this nature."

Wheeler later said that the unnamed teacher downloaded the assignment off the HomeschoolingParadise.com website instead of using the materials provided in the school for the 20 required homework problems. The CEO also added the teacher used "bad judgment."

These aren't the only math problems to garner national outrage. In January, parents of students at Beaver Ridge Elementary School in Norcross, Ga., were upset after math problems with examples of slavery and beatings were given in class:

"Each tree had 56 oranges. If 8 slaves pick them equally, then how much would each slave pick?" and "If Frederick got two beatings per day, how many beatings did he get in 1 week?"

The teacher eventually resigned.

SCROLL to read all of the math problems, courtesy of WUSA.

Homeschooling-Paradise Math Problems

Comments

[tjimison]

05:59 PM on 05/15/2013

Anyone interested in the state of MIS-education in America, especially as it relates to PUBLISHING GUIDELINES should read Diane Ravitch's book "The Language Police". It describes the current censorship at the source that has teachers looking somewhere, anywhere, but at textbooks for materials. The PC people have managed to coerce the textbook publishers in the United States to deliver a product that has been so extensively censored, it does not even resemble anything a reasonable person would voluntarily read! I just read 'A Mathematician's Lament" by Paul Lockhart .... fantastic!

[Hasbar Muhammad]

07:30 AM on 05/02/2013

I wonder how many of these "traumatized" students watched the "Twilight" serial movies, or play games with Zombies, etc.

The question with slaves in it was out of line, but the others were to distract and keep interest while testing math skills.

[SallySassalot]

05:51 PM on 04/12/2013

The questions are pretty stupid... and the teacher is pretty stupid for handing them out. Maybe he just didn't read it and passed it out because he was lazy?

It's not hard to make your own funny math questions for your students without using cannibals and people in ovens, surely. He should have done his own work. Or he could have made it more fun and had his students come up with silly questions.

[dietpepsi112]

11:01 PM on 01/30/2013

"The Singapore Math textbooks we use in our schools do not have any math problems of this nature."
Then why does the math worksheet that appears in the PDF from "Homeschooling-Paradise.com" have "Singapore 3rd Grade Math Worksheet: 5" along the top?

[BehindtheGrassyKnoll]

12:30 PM on 10/27/2012

Parents are nuts.

[sevendiadems]

05:58 PM on 10/07/2012

I think people need to relax. These problems make the assignment much more interesting! I for one am getting so annoyed with people making a huge fuss about trivial issues. If I had a child I would just help them with the assignment instead of telling my child not to complete their homework because it had words like "cannibal" and "bloodthirsty" and to go to their room where they can go steal cars, kill hookers, and blow up police cruisers in a video game they probably got their hands on the game because their 'friend' in school has parents that dont really care what their kid does. Usually as soon as an authoritative figure says "no" to a child it makes them want to do it a hundred times more! Kids are going to get exposed to everything you don't want them to no matter what. I think parents need to wake up and realize this and just show the kids themselves. Show them everything and talk with them the whole way through it. The children will be able to better handle themselves and become more wise about the terrible things in the world and they will be able to better trust their parents instead of feeling they hide everything from them.
OR- the better solution: Don't have children. I think it's a terrible idea given our planet's population is out of control and the world is comprised of more horses asses than there are horses.

[Mei Silja]

07:09 AM on 09/30/2012

XD If I had these math questions growing up.. I might have been more interested in math

[enokidake]

06:41 AM on 08/24/2012

Time to burn all copies of "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Hansel and Gretel" I guess.

[cosmos1922]

01:23 PM on 08/21/2012

I don't think there was anything wrong with the math problem the answer is 217 poor teachers in each ufo lol

[slappymagoo]

04:59 PM on 08/20/2012

Thank goodness the *CEO* of the school stepped in. That's the sort of thing that regular principal or superintendent just wouldn't be able to handle.

[TomUpton]

08:47 PM on 08/20/2012

Another CEO asleep at the wheel of his educational corporation...

[Kenneth Stein]

12:27 PM on 08/20/2012

I'm glad he was fired. "Green Aliens"? That's completely racist and discriminatory against the "Gray" aliens. When is this country going to move past skin color? Sad...

And then, not to mention the inflammatory problem involving trolls. Did he stop to wonder how the kids who are trolls in his class would feel? Like he was singling them out for humiliation? You can't just pick on one demographic in your class. That's utter anti-troll racism.

Besides, obvious troll is obvious.

[ghhking]

06:40 PM on 10/08/2012

Ha! Nice one.

[Kattywampus]

11:07 AM on 08/20/2012

No words from or about homeschooling-paradise.com , the place he got the math test in the first place?

[marissa emily]

10:50 AM on 08/20/2012

Glad this teacher was fired now he will be doing his math problems in the unemployment office...

I earn .................$ 0.00 a month
my mortgage is $1200.00 a month
groceries $ 800.00 a month how much money do I need to earn to pay my bills?

[Thomas Platt]

10:35 AM on 08/20/2012

It's like watching a maths teacher's mental breakdown in slow motion. Brilliant.

[Kimiko Austin-Rijs]

07:46 AM on 07/28/2012

I think firing him was over the top. With the violent games that kids play and the films that they watch, he thought that he was giving them something that they could identify with. People have this fantasy that third graders equate to kindergardeners when I have seen with my own eyes that this is not the case. Perhaps had the kids been middle school or high school age then it would have been better but I doubt it. In this PC culture of lets hang anyone high for any thing that goes against the new black. The US loves to pretend that it is not the violent place that the whole world knows that it is. I am an American. I know better.

[TomUpton]

08:45 PM on 08/20/2012

What is really the story is that the parents had to bring this to the attention of the School Administration. It would seem that they were OK with this and fired the teacher to save face. Seems like the teacher was trying to appeal to the kids with math, but his age-appropriate-subject mobile app was never updated.