Kate Hackett
Look, y’all, I’d argue that math is ALWAYS fun but I know that’s not going to win me over many friends. It’s fine, I’ll just gleefully run numbers alone.
But math still has to happen, like it or not, and this story of a teacher dealing with a parent sends shivers of gleeful laughter down my spine.
See, a Redditor shared that her sister gave her students a problem: Mary can swim at a rate of 2 meters per second. How long will it take her to swim to a raft 10 meters from shore?” Nothing wild. Pretty chill.
But guess who got their underwear in a twist over this word problem? Yes, you guessed it: a parent.
Here’s the original post:
My sister assigned the following homework problem to her 4th grade class: “Mary can swim at a rate of 2 meters per second. How long will it take her to swim to a raft 10 meters from shore?”
One of the parents sent her an email reminding her that in America we do not use the Metric system. She demanded that all math problems use “normal” units.
So after the teacher sent out the word problem, a parent took it upon herself to spend moments of her life complaining about the use of the metric system. Did this teacher roll over? Yes, but hilariously:
My sister replied with a new problem for the kid to solve: “Mary can swim at a rate of 2 yards and 6.740157480314949 inches per second. How long will it take her to swim to a raft 10 yards 2 feet and 9.700787401574757 inches from shore?”
The teacher gave a new problem, one that was WILDLY more difficult because — hold on to your hats, my friends — the metric system is used EVERYWHERE for a REASON.
And then Reddit chimed in with the laughter:
So many meter jokes.
A JOKE OF METRIC… hold on, I’m wheezing.
And brknsoul here for the absolute truth.
Hee hee hee! Nine .914m.
Ahh, math land. Where people in math problems do wild, wild things.
