Year 1 maths question has parents and internet stumped: ‘Set up to fail’

A deceivingly simple maths question has left parents scratching their heads. Photo / 123RF

A maths question, which at first glance seems simple, was given to students in the US and has left parents baffled.

Mum Tiesha Sanders from Texas posted a picture of her kid’s Year 1 maths homework. On the page was the instruction “Fill in the missing numbers”, Kidspot reports.

The homework shows where the daughter filled out the “ones” column in the middle table with the number seven.

So when the last part of the question asked her to write how many “ones” there were, she thought it was seven.

A deceivingly simple maths question has left parents everywhere scratching their heads. Photo / Facebook

‘This is the new math they have us teaching’

Tiesha was left scratching her head when her child came home with the question marked wrong. She decided to contact the teacher and ask for an explanation.

“Hello, I just wanted to ask how Summer got #3 wrong? Her father and I were going over her mistakes and wanted to be sure we were on the right track,” she wrote below the question in the homework.

The teacher responded: “Hello this is the new math they have us teaching,” which was accompanied by a diagram of the correct answer (below).

“It wants her to know that having two tens and seven ones is the same as 27 ones.”

The teacher wrote back: ‘Hello this is the new math they have us teaching.’ Photo / Facebook

‘Set up to fail’

Tiesha revealed in the post that she had been a primary school teacher for six years and had never seen this kind of question before.

“This new math is NOT it,” she complained.

Three thousand and seven hundred people left comments on the post, with most of them chiming in with the mum in agreeance.

“The hell???????” one follower wrote.

Another said, “This is goofy,” while a third shared, “This would have p***ed me off.”

The correct answer to the year-one maths question stumping students and parents online. Photo / Facebook

Other people highlighted the problematic structure of the question, adding: “But if they have the box that labels ‘tens’ and ‘ones’ then only ask for the ‘ones’, how in the entire world is this math, mathing?”

Someone chimed in, saying, “The question sets them up to fail.”

Another social media user suggested that the arrows should have instead been written as equal signs, to imply that all the components were the same.

Instead, the arrows seem to hint that you should build off the components in the past sections to answer the next ones.

“That’s where this whole question fails,” the person argued. “In the arrows.”