Mathematics has always been a subject that leaves many people scratching their heads, but hidden within the numbers are many interesting things, which is why not a few people feel intrigued and choose it to pursue becoming a researcher or a teacher. These professions require real diligence and always the utmost precision, especially for teachers, who bear the responsibility of imparting knowledge to others.
Yet, there have been numerous occasions when the online community has been left speechless due to test questions and grading errors. For instance, in the case below, a primary school student was given a test by the teacher with the following question: A rice shop has 10,450 kg of rice, and the shop sold 560 kg of rice each week for 4 weeks. How much rice does the shop have left?
According to what the problem states, the student had a solution with the correct answer. This student solved the problem in two steps: calculating the total amount of rice sold over 4 weeks and then finding out how much rice remained.
However, for reasons unknown, the answer was not accepted by the teacher, who required the student to redo it by subtracting 560 kg (the amount of rice sold in one week) from the initial total. This has led to intense debates online about whether the teacher or the student was correct.
Of course, at a glance, anyone would think the student was correct and that the teacher must have made a mistake in grading. However, some other opinions have thought of many scenarios as to why the teacher did not accept the answer.
User Bjan B.D commented: “It seems the question is incomplete. It should ask how much is left that month, right? If asking by week, the answer is correct. But if asking by month, then the student did it right!?”
User T.M suggested a hypothesis: “Maybe the question was wrong, so the teacher reported it and asked for it to be corrected, but the student didn’t fix the question. If following the original question, the math problem must have 2 solutions, but the space provided for the answer only left room for one solution, so the teacher might have changed the question to ‘the shop sells 560 kg of rice,’ removing the part about ‘selling for 4 weeks.'”
Another account commented: “Perhaps the teacher wanted to adjust the answer to 10,450 – (560 x 4) but was in a hurry and missed it!”
Indeed, being a teacher is not easy as they are the standard of knowledge and correctness for students to learn from and emulate. Therefore, situations that spark such controversies should be limited to avoid causing confusion not only for students but also for parents.