Again, tasty copy-pasta:
How much can a milkmaid milk and other problems for third-graders
Do you want to know what country you live in – take a look at a school math textbook. Today, "third-graders" solve problems about the egg-laying capacity of chickens, milk yields, and potato harvests, and also get acquainted with dysfunctional families and calculate series in "soap operas."
When my third-grade son once again brought home a problem about planting agricultural crops, I couldn't take it anymore and carefully studied his textbook. It turned out that it's hard to imagine a more eloquent testimony to our life.
Note for the collective farmer
It's unknown whether children studying from this textbook will grow up to be great mathematicians, but that these kids have a great agricultural future ahead of them is certain. Even Lukashenko doesn't bring up this many agricultural problems at his conference calls! Here you have calculations for the weight of chickens, turkeys, and geese, calculating the yield of corn and potatoes, counting units of agricultural machinery, and even determining the amount of wool that can be sheared from the currently fashionable farm animal – the sheep. Our children count potatoes in sacks and milk in canisters.
Math problems are simply a treasure trove of useful information. So, from the third grade onward, kids already know that:
— "one chicken eats 2 kg of grain each month, one goose – 4 kg,"
— "three chickens will lay 3 eggs in 3 days,"
— "with a milking machine, a milkmaid can milk 10 cows in 1 hour,"
— "1 kg of butter is obtained from 25 liters of milk,"
— "3-4 kg, and sometimes even 5 kg of wool can be sheared from a sheep,"
— "for 3 days, 6 sheep need 36 kg of hay,"
— "a chicken is 6 times lighter than a piglet,"
— "8 times more potatoes can be harvested from an experimental plot than were planted,"
— "18 kg of cherries can be picked from one tree."
Flipping through the textbook, you understand what normal children should actually be doing in their free time from studies. Computers and game consoles pale in comparison to meaningful child labor in the fields, gardens, and orchards:
— "50 students worked in the field, the garden had 5 times fewer children than the field, and the orchard had 5 times fewer children than the garden…"
— "Two girls and a boy weeded 19 rows of cabbage…,"
— "In the school orchard, students picked 90 kg of apples and 42 kg of pears…."
It's unknown, really, whether modern city schoolchildren, raised in concrete jungles, will understand the problems of rural life, but they will certainly be interested to learn that
"a father and son are cutting two-meter logs for firewood, sawing off pieces in 2 minutes…," "Uncle Artyom rode a horse 18 km in 2 hours," and "a student covers the road to school in 40 minutes."
Well, and to broaden the horizons of third-graders, they are invited to get acquainted with the life of African farmers by solving a problem about how: "Three elephants carried logs. The first elephant brought 31 logs, the second 25 logs…."
In fairness, we should note that the textbook also contains (though not very often) problems about representatives of working professions. For example, you can learn that "one weaver operates 17 looms," and "a turner manufactured 100 parts."
Surprisingly, a problem about the intelligentsia was even found. The condition says: "There are 87 books in the home library: 27 for adults, 20 for schoolchildren, and the rest for preschoolers." The question is: "How many books are for preschoolers?" Admit it, it's nice to realize that for our intelligent, reading nation (as many as 27 adult books in the family!), the most important thing is the children: they form the main part of the family library.
"The best country in the world"
Reading the problems, you begin to understand that you live in the best country in the world. Here, children in kindergartens are fed tangerines daily: "Mandarin oranges were brought to the kindergarten. After spending 9 kg of tangerines per day for five days, 18 kg remained…" (enough for another 10 days!). And electronics don't sit idle on store shelves: "TVs were brought to the store. At the end of the day, 28 of them remained, and the number sold was 4 times less than the number remaining…."
They don't forget about the cultural level of the population here either. Third-graders are asked, for example, to calculate the number of episodes in a series: "60 episodes of a multi-episode film were shown on television. This is 20 episodes more than are left to show…."
And of course, what would it be without sports? Especially concerning the sports achievements of the best skiers in the class, who are being prepared for some big competition (could it be the "Minsk Ski Track"?): "Kolya, Styopa, Masha, and Vasya are the best skiers in the class. A team of three needs to be made for the competition. How many ways can this be done?" I don't know the answer, but something tells me that Kolya will go no matter what. Just like Sasha, who isn't listed. ;)
Math textbooks also respond to acute social problems in society. You can even find problems about dysfunctional families where parents don't want to take care of their children: "A mother has two daughters and one son. One daughter gets a pie, the second also gets a pie. And for the little son? She forgot." Thankfully, justice in our socially oriented state is not an empty phrase, as evidenced by the end of the problem: "Let each sister give half to their little brother. That's what they did." The question is: "Who got more?" — here's an example of concrete targeted assistance to socially vulnerable segments of the population!
Life's Awkward Moments
Erotic Tragedy.
Four people were delivered to the hospital simultaneously: Shelley Mueller with a head injury, Tim Vegas with a mild concussion, Brian Corcoran with serious gum damage, and Pamela Klesick missing two fingers on her right hand...
Mueller was giving her husband a ride to work and, as a farewell – in addition to a kiss – briefly flashed her breasts at him. This was seen by Tim Vegas, the driver of a passing taxi.
Distracted by the spectacle unfolding, he lost control and crashed into the hospital building, where dentist Pamela Klesick was examining Corcoran's oral cavity. From the strong impact, the doctor jumped and cut the patient's gums with her instrument. In shock, Corcoran sharply closed his jaws, biting off two of Klesick's fingers. Mueller took a piece of the building debris on her head.
Belfry in the Anus.
Prosecutor Antonio Mendoza confirmed an old truth: you can laugh at yourself in any situation. Slipping on the tiles in the bathroom, he sat down on his cell phone, which his dog had brought there and placed in a vertical position. The operation to extract the phone from his anus lasted a whole three hours because the phone's flip cover opened. During the operation, the phone rang several times, and the victim made such jokes about it that the doctors and nurses were howling with laughter. By the end, they had already decided they would find an answering machine in there too.
(Василь Симоненко. Люди – прекрасні)




