One awesome little fourth grader in Salt Lake County, Utah, is making headlines after noticing an offensive question on her math homework and promptly calling it out.
Nine-year-old Rhythm Pacheco was so appalled by the question, she showed it to her mom, and then took things one step further by circling the problem and writing a note to her teacher about why she was refusing to answer it.
The question read: “The table to the right shows the weight of three Grade 4 students. How much heavier is Isabel than the lightest student?”
Alongside this, a table listed the names and weights of the three students.
Clearly unhappy with the question mentioning girls’ weights, however, Rhythm annotated the homework paper, writing: “What!!!! This is offensive! Sorry, I won’t right this it’s rood.”
“I thought it was offensive,” Rhythm told KSTU. “I didn’t like that because girls shouldn’t be comparing each other. I know it was a math problem … but I don’t think that was really okay.”
Her mother wasn’t happy about it either.
“I was shocked, honestly,” Naomi Pacheco said. “I feel like it’s such an irresponsible way to teach children how to do math.”
Upset by what she was seeing, Rhythm turned to her mom and said, “‘You know Mom, I’m not going to answer this question. I’m not going to do it.'”
Instead, she circled the homework problem and left a note for her teacher, explaining why she was skipping over the exercise.
After writing the comment, she also was worried about how her teacher would react, so she wrote another separate letter for her teacher to read later on after the quiz.
It said: “I don’t want to be rude but I don’t think that math problem was very nice because that’s judging people’s weight.” and “Also the reason I did not do the sentence is because I just don’t think that’s nice. Love Rhythm.”
The maths paper was given to Rhythm’s school by a company called Eureka Math. Although Rhythm’s teacher was supportive of the student’s decision to not answer the question, she said that the question before dealt with a St Bernard dog.
According to Fox13, the school says the question is only intended to provide students with practice in converting grams and kilograms.
Eureka director Chad Colby said: “There is no value judgement in the question about weight, it’s merely a comparison.”
Colby said that the company has no plans to take the question off the maths paper.
It comes after a British exam board said that students could complain if they felt ‘triggered’ by a GCSE question that discussed how many calories a woman had consumed for breakfast.
One girl left the exam hall in a panic but the exam board EdExcel found the question to be valid.
Watch the video report below for more details:
Sources: AmericaNews, KSTU
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