19 December 2023 , 15:15
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For some people, school brings back blissful memories while for others it conjures up painful visions of obscure homework questions night after night. The good news is that those days are over - unless you now have children yourself who want help with their latest homework assignment, of course.
One parent recently took to Reddit to share their six-year-old's school maths assignment that left them scratching their head in bafflement. The post, entitled 'So confused at six year old's homework', shows a photo of the child's activity sheet with 16 apples and a splatter of paint printed on it.
The question underneath then reads: "Danny has dropped paint on his book. How many apples could be covered by the paint. There cannot be more than 20."
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Such was the seeming complexity of the question that around 3,200 users replied to the parent with their thoughts on it. However, one person questioned the awkward angle of the photo to begin with and said: "I’m so confused by the orientation you chose to use for this photo."
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Another replied: "I assume the photographer is Dutch," which led to an off-piste sub-debate over the filmmaking technique of Dutch angles. But back to the tricky question in hand and barely anyone appeared to have a clue what the actual answer was.
One user suggested that the child should not even bother answering it: "Okay there are a million things wrong about this but I don’t think he needs to answer because I don’t see a question mark anywhere in that horrendously dumb pile of word garbage."
Someone else compared it to a nightmare: "This is like the type of homework problem I face in a dream. Nonsense presented like it’s normal and simple and I’M the moron who still needs to pass 1st grade."
While one person thought it was less a maths question and more a riddle and said: "0 apples as Danny dropped the paint on his book and not an apple. I feel like it’s a weird sphinx riddle…" Although it wasn't made clear in the post, another user had an idea of the type of school giving out this homework: "Obviously this is a private pre-pre-law school. The question is meant to be objected to and argued as it is baseless and speculative without evidence or testimony to support it."
Attempts were made to rationalise the question, as one person noted: "I think the idea is to go off the “most” and “least” labels. for the 16 to be labeled as least, it would have to have less than the other group. Basically I think they just want a number between 17 and 20," with many others agreeing with this logic, including an educator.
The frustrated teaching assistant replied: "Answer is 17-20! Source: am teaching assistant and have explained this exact question to kids before. The way they’ve phrased it is a frustrating, especially when these sheets are given out to parents as homework, but they’re often designed to align with the methods of teaching the topic in class. The children will learn using similar phrasing or slightly dumbed down words which makes it complicated to us as adults who would expect the correct language."