According to statistics, exact sciences are more difficult for children than humanitarian ones. Perhaps that is why the compilers of school textbooks use dubious techniques to revive difficult-to-perceive information.
A few days ago, a colleague Marina, usually calm and judicious, came to work in a state of noticeable emotional excitement. “What are taught to our children at school! – she exclaimed literally from the doorway. – Yesterday my daughter read me the condition of the problem in mathematics. At first I thought that she was playing a trick on me, but no – a task from a real mathematics textbook for the fifth grade edited by Dorofeeva and Peterson. “
The entire department was unanimously interested in what kind of task could be so puzzling to our Miss Poise. “I’ll read it now! – Marina fired up, taking out the phone. – I specially photographed a page from the textbook so that you would not think that I am entertaining you with Internet tales. Here listen: “Cowboy Joe walked into a bar and asked the bartender for a bottle of whiskey for three dollars, a pipe for 6 dollars, 3 packs of tobacco and 9 boxes of waterproof matches, the price of which he did not know. The bartender demanded from him 14 dollars 80 cents (in 1 dollar 100 cents), to which Joe pulled out a revolver. The bartender counted and corrected the error. How did Joe know the bartender was trying to rob him? “
There was silence in the department. Thoughts swirled not around the ways to solve the problem – so impressed by the “creativity” of the authors of the textbook. A strange contradiction did not fit in my head: on the one hand, in the struggle for the health of the nation, the law prescribes to hide the showcases with cigarettes, from good old films to cut out frames with smoking and drinking alcohol, it is recommended to place shelves with strong drinks in the most distant sections of supermarkets, and on the other – the same law does not in any way regulate the appearance of all these positions in the textbook for five-graders. Therefore, instead of the usual balls and bunnies, kids now operate with bottles, pipes and matches. In a word, in the process of learning they learn about life in all its diversity. But someone, probably, should edit the excessive everyday realism of the compilers of textbooks for primary schoolchildren, so that their development occurs in accordance with age? That way, the children will soon begin to master the basics of counting on contraceptives and night butterflies.
Another moment alarmed: the task convinces the schoolchildren that good should be with fists. Have you been deceived or offended? Get out your revolver or whatever you have similar, but no less frightening! There is no need to get to the bottom of the truth with words, with a pistol you will be much more convincing.
We asked a colleague if my daughter had solved the problem. “No,” Marina shook her head. – But I asked what the whiskey looks like more, a Pepsi or a sprite. And I was puzzled that I had never tasted this drink. My husband and I were also puzzled: what did the authors of this textbook smoke? “
By the way, the problem has a completely rational mathematical solution. The cost of 3 packs of tobacco and 9 boxes of waterproof matches: S = 14,80 – 3 – 6, where $ 14 80 cents is the money demanded by the bartender, $ 3 is the cost of a bottle of whiskey, $ 6 is the cost of a pipe. S = 14,80 – 9 = $ 5 80 cents, or 580 cents. Let’s assume that 1 pack of tobacco and 3 boxes of waterproof matches are equal to x. Then 3 packs of tobacco and 9 boxes of waterproof matches is equal to 3x. 3x = 580.x = 580/3, but 580 is not divisible by 3 without remainder. So Joe could guess that they were trying to cheat him. The only pity is that an advanced cowboy who knows how not only to shoot, but also to count, attracted the attention of boys and girls to the side of reality from which they are protected by the law with all their might. Or not all of them?