Mom Stunned By Violent Quiz Question On 11-Year-Old’s Homework — Is This How To Teach Grammar?

Alex Garrod is the mom of an 11-year-old Year Six schoolboy in Kent, England, who says she normally doesn’t worry too much about her son, Harry. But when he came home with a grammar quiz for homework recently, one question on the assignment caused her to raise her eyebrows — to say the least.

Year Six in Britain the equivalent of sixth grade in the United States system. And like in the U.S., kids take standardized tests on a regular basis. This questionable homework assignment was intended to prep kids for the grammar portion of one such test.

Specifically, the homework was designed to help the kids master the proper use of the personal pronouns “I” and “me,” with a sentence-completion quiz. Students were given a series of sentences and asked to fill in the blanks with one of the two pronouns.

Take a look at the actual quiz itself. See if you can spot the question that had the 29-year-old mom’s ire raised.

Here’s a hint. It wasn’t, “‘____ am a very good boy,’ said Little Johnny.”

Of course not. And, of course, the offending sentence was the one that, when completed, would read, “Hand me the money before I put a bullet through your head.”

“I was shocked. I thought, ‘Am I reading this correctly?’ Because Harry had to put ‘I’ and ‘me’ in the sentence it was as though he was writing as himself,” said the mom in an interview with her local newspaper, the Kent Messenger. “It put him off the rest of the paper because all he could talk about was the bullet question.”

By the placement of the question on the homework sheet, it seems possible that the bizarre “bullet through your head” question was taken from the popular — but very violent — British comic book series Judge Dredd.

American readers are probably more familiar with Judge Dredd through the series of movie adaptations featuring the character.

“I’m not a parent that gets in a flap about it affecting Harry. He’s quite clever, but it’s still an inappropriate question for a child to answer,” said Garrod. “Afterwards, I did explain to Harry that you don’t need to be putting bullets through people’s heads to get money. He was like, ‘I know that Mum.'”

The school that assigned the homework, Eastchurch Primary School in Isle of Sheppey in Kent, was apologetic, offering the excuse that the quiz was taken from a Times newspaper educational supplement — but also chastised the mom for talking to the media about the disturbing homework question and not contacting the school first.

[Image via The Kent Messenger]