During our primary school years, many of us likely encountered Math questions that were too complicated for us to even grasp or answer confidently. However, there are cases where teachers are found to be unfairly grading students’ tests.
In a recent viral story circulating on the internet, a school student received partial marks for answering a math question with RM2 instead of 200 cent.
A lecturer, Othman Talib, took to Facebook to share his thoughts on the situation.
In the post, the lecturer expressed dissatisfaction with the teacher’s action, stating that the student’s answer was correct and should have been accepted.
He also noted that in everyday life, 200 cents is indeed mentioned as RM2, and that writing RM2 is a clever way to answer to the question.
‘RM2 should be accepted as correct!’
The student displayed the calculation, adding 80 sen to two 60 sen coins, resulting in the answer of RM2.
However, despite the student’s effort, the teacher considered the RM2 answer incorrect simply because he didn’t write it as 200 sen, awarding him with only 3 out of 4 marks.
Many online users flooded the comment section, saying the teacher’s call was unfair and the student should’ve gotten full marks
“Where is the art of teaching? In math, there isn’t only one specific way to solve calculations. This student is considered smart simply because they converted it from cents to ringgit, which shows their high standard. Even diploma students sometimes struggle with unit conversion.”
“I didn’t realise that teachers like this still existed.”
“If they wanted the answer in cent format, they should have noted it with ‘Please provide the answer in cent value’.”
“If you were to go to a shop, would you pay in cents? The question itself is already incorrect. If they wanted the answer in cents, they should’ve rephrased the question and requested that the answer be provided in cent value instead.”
You can read the full story here.
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