{"id":396596,"date":"2018-01-30T12:29:21","date_gmt":"2018-01-30T12:29:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=396596"},"modified":"2018-01-30T12:29:21","modified_gmt":"2018-01-30T12:29:21","slug":"unsolvable-exam-question-leaves-chinese-students-flummoxed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=396596","title":{"rendered":"‘Unsolvable’ exam question leaves Chinese students flummoxed"},"content":{"rendered":"

An apparently unsolvable exam question on a Chinese maths paper has left both students and social media stumped.<\/p>\n

Primary school students at a school in the Chinese district of Shunqing were faced with this question on a paper: “If a ship had 26 sheep and 10 goats onboard, how old is the ship’s captain?”<\/p>\n

The question appeared on a recent fifth-grade level paper, intended for children around 11 years old.<\/p>\n

Pictures of the question, along with students’ valiant attempts at answers, surfaced this week on Chinese social media – where it triggered debate and quickly went viral.<\/p>\n

Education officials later said the question was not a mistake, but meant to highlight “critical awareness”.<\/p>\n

\"Chinese<\/p>\n

“The captain is at least 18 because he has to be an adult to drive the ship,” one student answered.<\/p>\n

“The captain is 36, because 26+10 is 36 and the captain wanted them to add up to his age,” another guessed.<\/p>\n

One student however, simply gave up.<\/p>\n

“The captain’s age is… I don’t know. I can’t solve this.”<\/p>\n

Online, however, people weren’t quite as generous.<\/p>\n

“This question makes no logical sense at all. Does the teacher even know the answer?”\u00a0said one commenter on Weibo, a Chinese microblogging platform.<\/p>\n

“If a school had 26 teachers, 10 of which weren’t thinking, how old is the principal?” another asked.<\/p>\n

Some however, defended the school – which has not been named – saying the question promoted critical thinking.<\/p>\n

“The whole point of it is to make the students think. It’s done that,” one person commented.<\/p>\n

“This question forces children to explain their thinking and gives them space to be creative. We should have more questions like this,” another said.<\/p>\n

‘Think outside the box’<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Shunqing Education Department posted a statement on the 26 January saying the test had intended to “examine… critical awareness and an ability to think independently”.<\/p>\n

“Some surveys show that primary school students in our country lack a sense of critical awareness in regard to mathematics,” it said.<\/p>\n

The traditional Chinese method of education heavily emphasises on note-taking and repetition, known as rote learning, which critics say hinders creative thinking.<\/p>\n

But the department said questions like the boat one “enable students to challenge boundaries and think out of the box”.<\/p>\n

And of course, there’s always that one person that has all the answers.<\/p>\n

“The total weight of 26 sheep and 10 goat is 7,700kg, based on the average weight of each animal,” said one Weibo commenter.<\/p>\n

“In China, if you’re driving a ship that has more than 5,000kg of cargo you need to have possessed a boat license for five years. The minimum age for getting a boat’s license is 23, so he’s at least 28.”<\/p>\n

–<\/p>\n

Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An apparently unsolvable exam question on a Chinese maths paper has left both students and social media stumped. Primary school students at a school in the Chinese district of Shunqing were faced with this question on a paper: “If a ship had 26 sheep and 10 goats onboard, how old is the ship’s captain?” The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":396597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[139,16632,5700],"class_list":["post-396596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","tag-china","tag-chinese-question","tag-exam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=396596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/396596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/396597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=396596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=396596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=396596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}