I’m wondering if this is some sort of new age testing method where they combine two subjects into one test so students have two chances to get the right answer. Judging by the photo it looks like the subjects were algebra and Maya Angelou.
If that’s the case then I have a bigger problem with this silly testing method than the fact the included questions about Maya’s tragic childhood.
Here’s a really bad one I read about this week:
The boys and girls in Lacy’s class were each given a sheet of paper with instructions to go on a $5 date. The teacher, who is not being named, reports the Salt Lake City Tribune, wanted the exercise to be a “light-hearted lesson in social norms.”
Underneath the instructions were suggestions to the girls and boys, from members of the opposite sex. Briefly, some of the suggestions to the girls read:
Eat the food you order. Don’t waste his money.
Don’t worry about your appearance the whole date.
Show respect for him.
Keep up your end of the conversation, listen and respond.
Don’t criticize his driving (unless it’s not safe).
Agreed. People get raped and people of highschool age should be able to address the problem and work to be the generation that stops such attrocities.
My problem is that the problem, as presented and constructed, is dog shit. It is simply provocative for the sake of being provocative. It’s not constructive nor enlightening. It’s lazy and violent.
It is, if you’re specifying which side of the family the uncle or the grandfather is on.
I agree that it does trivialize the book and the author’s experiences. I was attempting to say that if you are going to do weird literature/math problems, brainspore’s ““Angelou was sexually abused by her mother’s boyfriend at age X” (solve for X)" is a better approach in general.
I haven’t read that book for quite a while, but as I recall the answer is none of the above. Have I missed something?
I think the idea of combining math, reading, and biographical history is brilliant. You force the non-math kids into realizing they can in fact grasp simple algebra, and you force the yes-math humanities-adverse kids into learning shit they don’t want to learn.
Granted, could use some polish, but the idea behind it mirrors how I think we learn stuff – by approaching methodology and knowledge via several different pathways.
Yes, this!
Right you are:
But this seems legit.
I could definitely see math problems like this dressed up with corny jokes, or maybe clever facts about science and history. It’s a perfectly reasonable way of enlivening the material. But literature, especially about abuse and prostitution, is a bizarre stretch.
How old are the kids in the class? I mean if this helps kids actually pay attention and learn more than one thing at a time I don’t see the problem. We are talking about HS kids right? My biggest issue is that it might compromise learning the math if someone knew enough about the associated word fill ins. Still on the balance it probably would get kids to pay attention more.
Yeah, that’s how I remember it.
Oh, I missed the “mother’s” in the description. I would have failed that test. 
A particularly elegant way to do it would be to frame the question so that you need to use all three to solve. You have to correctly read and understand something, extract the relevant information, construct the appropriate equation, then solve it using more information from the same text, or a different one.
I’ve had various teachers and lecturers and textbooks attempt that, but none of them in a memorably engaging way. And I can see that it would be complex and time consuming to set up
The comments under that piece are disheartening.
I guess Utah is still stuck in the 1950s?
To summarise:
They are talking about a $5 date. What is that, a trip to the office vending machine?
So, is there a legible copy of the boy’s version?
Or are we just morally outraged because we are applying stereotypical views to the women and since the boys are the privileged group they don’t matter?
FTFA:
Yeah, I did see those 
I call bullshit. Every other story we’ve seen like this, including the ones Jorpho linked above, turned out to be fake news. It seems there’s a lot of people out there who like concocting this kind of story to bash teachers, because they had a bad experience at school, or because they are ideologically opposed to anything funded by government. Or both - there may be a correlation.
Dude, there’s a lot you can get off the dollar menu at Taco Bell! Of course that limits romance possibilities later, but it appears that this girl will be holding an aspirin between her knees as our wise Supreme Court has advocated for young ladies.
REPULSIVE. If true, fire that teacher.
