A nine-year-old girl was so outraged by an 'offensive' question on a maths paper that she refused to answer it, writing her teacher a letter instead.
Rhythm Pacheco, who is from Salt Lake City, Utah, was given a maths question in which she was asked to work out how much more one fictional student weighed than another.
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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 wont right this it's rood." [sic]
The youngster told Fox13: "I thought it was offensive. 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... I didn't really think that would be on homework, I thought that would be fruits or vegetables or things like that."
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Not wanting to get in trouble for refusing to answer the question, Rhythm decided to write a note to her teacher to accompany the paper.
It read: "I don't want to be rude, but I think that math problem wasn't very nice, I thought that was judging people's weight. Also, the reason I didn't write a sentence is because I just didn't think that was nice."
Rhythm's mum Naomi Pacheco backed her daughter's opinion on the test question.
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She told the news outlet: "I was shocked, honestly. I feel like it's such an irresponsible way to teach children how to do math."
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 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."
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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 which discussed how many calories a woman had consumed for breakfast.
One girl left the exam hall in a panic but exam board EdExcel found the question to be valid.
Featured Image Credit: Fox13Topics: US News