Student penalized for writing the number “4” the “wrong” way on worksheet

08:18 cherishe 0 Comments

And in the process learns a lot about life.

A lot has been said about the relative rigidness of the Japanese school system, one in which 5 x 100 does not always equal 500 and even the correct way to use a bathroom scale is taught and tested. Like any system, it has its merits such as teaching responsible habits and its demerits like stunting students’ ability to learn foreign languages or driving stressed-out teachers to hoard hundreds of panties.

And then sometimes we just have to scratch our head and wonder if anyone is even running this whole show. For example, Twitter user Toyoshi (@toyoshi) in Nagoya posted a photo of his child’s math worksheet after it was graded by a teacher. However, as we can see there was an issue with the answer to the second question.

To the answer “3 + 1” the student had written “4” as the answer, but despite showing a good ability to calculate, the teacher marked the answer as wrong. In the margin, they explain that this is because the uppermost lines of the students’ four are touching. Of course, those lines should never touch if one were to make a perfect “4”…or at least we would all know that if we lived inside the imaginary world that this teacher has constructed in their head.

While a few people may agree with that handwriting rule, most would probably feel that the student’s “4” was perfectly reasonable, including – as many had pointed out – THE PEOPLE WHO MADE THE FREAKIN’ WORKSHEET!

Although some handwriting experts will say putting a gap in the top of your fours will help to distinguish them from nines, many still felt the teacher’s judgment was unsound.

“That’s awful. It’s only the teacher’s opinion.”
“That’s worthless. I think it’s more important to teach that different people write their fours differently.”
“It’s good to point that out as a suggestion, but what kind of message does penalizing the kid send?”
“If they want to teach it that way, fine, but make sure the textbooks are on the same page for crying out loud.”
“That’s not good for motivation. If my teacher gave me the credit and helpfully suggested how to write it. I would try hard to do so, because my teacher was nice.”
“I like how there was a huge issue with the ‘4’ and yet that crappy ‘6’ below it was totally OK lol.”

While the student may have come out of this more confused than educated, it can be said he or she learned a valuable lesson: Life isn’t fair, and sometimes even when you’re right, and you have all the evidence behind you saying that you are right, you’re wrong. The kid’s pretty lucky to learn that at such an early age. I didn’t until marriage.

Source: Twitter/@toyoshi, My Game News Flash, Hachima Kiko
Featured image: Twitter/@toyoshi



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