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