SEA BC

BC Pires
BC Pires

THANK GOD IT’S FRIDAY

YESTERDAY, 18,000 11-year-olds sat the Secondary Entrance Assessment exam, all hoping to pass for a “prestige school” which, in Trinidad, means a school where the chemistry lab actually has some test tubes and a bunsen burner and the weapons used in schoolyard fights do not usually include firearms.

In sympathy, then, with children whose educations may have ended yesterday, before their adolescence started, I begin my own Senility Escape Assessment exam, with a Newsday practice test, maths today and, next Friday, “language arts,” the modern Trinidadian pidgin for what used to be called “English.” I’ve shortened the questions considerably because SEA grammatical style is not particularly languaged-ly-artful.

Mathematics. Section I

Q1. How many tens are there in 156? Them wicked SEA examiners start with a trick question to separate CIC/QRC sheep from South East POS goats, who will say there are NO tens, just one one, a five and a six, which add up to 12.

Q2. If five brooms cost $110, calculate the cost of one? Why would anyone need five firetrucking brooms? Except the PNM and UNC, who both have plenty to sweep under the carpet, and would benefit from five industrial vacuum cleaners.

Q4. Mark’s salary is $12,000. Calculate Lisa’s salary if it is 2/3 or Mark’s? This is really a social science question masquerading as maths, and designed to train Lisa into being subordinate to and earning less than men, especially if the man is a pastor, when Lisa must hand over liberal sexual favours as well as ten per cent of her 2/3 less salary, because God wills it; Lisa must just shut her eyes, give thanks and, optionally, pelt waist.

Q6. How many total cans are there if a grocer packs six shelves with 24 cans each and eight cans remain? The answer is, we doesn’t care how much-a can it have on how much-a shelf, once it ent have no racist Ramsaran peanut punch, becaw the road to an egalitarian society is paved with Nestle, ent it. Tell all them people they mother can’t help Naila now.

Section II

Q26. A small pizza was cut into eight slices and a large one into 16. If 3/4 of the small and 5/8 of the large were eaten, what fraction was eaten altogether? Depends on where everybody was sitting, ent it, because they have to eat it all together? But anybody could tell you that the whole meatlovers woulda sharity get buss up, while the fraction that wasn’t eaten was bound to be the veggie pizza one, with some old raw onion and li’l bit o’ dry bhagi and two-three piece of mushroom and no pineapple on it.

Q28. How many grapefruits are there in a bag containing 77 fruit if there are five more oranges than apples and seven more grapefruit than oranges? Another trick question but I footy well know that you CANNOT add oranges and apples! The answer is, “Kamla ent get no change from she recount, betty-goatee!”

Section III

Q 36. Which two flat shapes have parallel and perpendicular sides? I’m not sure, but I think the answer is Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Q41. 37 was multiplied by a number and that number added to 60 for a total of 171. That number was then multiplied by a number and that product was divided by nine to make 57. Create the number sentences and answer the question? Firetruck off, this is a language arts question, not a maths one; too besides, the only product we dividing and throwing ’way the remainder is Ramsaran Peanut Punch.

Q 42. Ian is paid $60 per hour for his eight-hour workday and “time-and-a-half” for every overtime hour. Calculate his overtime hours if he was paid $840 on Wednesday? Does “time-and-a-half” mean 150 per cent of “time?” Is “time-and-a-half” a maths concept now, like the square on the hypotenuse being equal to the sum of the squares on the opposite and adjacent?

That’s enough firetrucking maths. Next week we do language artlessly.

BC Pires is either spinning top in mud at CIC or doing trigger-nometry at SEPOS. Read a longer version of this column at www.BCPires.com tomorrow

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