4th-grade student Maddy Douglas refers to her mother’s ‘girl code’ dating rule in Common Core maths question

Student’s mother, however, wonders whether the question was appropriate for a 4th-grader or not

Aftab Ali
Student Editor
Tuesday 10 November 2015 12:04 GMT
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The young student's answer which has been winning over the Internet
The young student's answer which has been winning over the Internet

It can take some people the best part of their young adult lives to learn the fundamental rules of that fickle game known as ‘dating’. However, one youngster seems to be well ahead of the game - at just nine years old.

Fourth-grader Maddy Douglas, from Iowa in the US, was presented with a Common Core maths homework problem on the subject of a group of high school pupils who were out to date each other.

The question read:

In high school, Frank, Mike, George, and Ron each went out on a total of 4 dates with 4 different girls. The second time Frank dated Rose and George dated Kay. The third time Mike dated Mary and Ron dated Louise. The fourth time, George dated Louise and Ron dated Kay. For each of the 4 times, tell which girl dated which boy.

Hint: For the fourth date, Louise dated George and and Kay dated Ron. You know Frank dated Rose on the second date. Who had to be Frank’s fourth date?

(Jenn Morrison Douglas/Facebook

Young Maddy’s answer? “I cant aswer this problem because my mom says acoording to girl code you shoudent date a friends x boyfriend.” Maddie: 1, maths problem: 0.

The student’s mother, Jenn Morrison Douglas, posted an image of her daughter’s homework - complete with sassy answer - onto Facebook which quickly began to gather attention under the hashtag #GirlCodeTrumpsCommonCore.

Speaking with The Huffington Post, Maddy’s mother described how she was ‘disgusted’ when her daughter showed her the question and answer and told how Maddy said: “Didn’t you tell me that you shouldn’t date your friend’s ex-boyfriend?”

However, despite the light-heartedness around the young student’s homework, Jenn took to Facebook to highlight whether the question was even appropriate or not. She wrote: “I was NOT happy about this at ALL. I don’t care if they prefaced it with ‘In High School’. Still not appropriate.”

Maddy’s teacher, however, saw the funny side when the homework was submitted and reportedly told her: “Good point.”

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