Kids taking Dubya Math find nothing adds up

In its continuing quest to ensure that no child is left behind, the U. S. government is revamping the nation’s school curriculum from top to bottom. Desperate to improve students’ test scores in arithmetic, the government is now urging more and more schools to introduce a program known as “ Dubya Math.” What follows are a few sample questions from an official Dubya math exam: 1. George W.’ s tree house, where he hangs out with the other kids in his club, Dick and Donald and Condi and Karl, needs more supporting braces to ensure that it doesn’t come crashing down in the event of a high wind. If George W. needs three twobyfours, each 6 feet long, and they cost 50 cents a foot, how much does George W. have to spend to make his tree house safe? a) $9 b) $ 6.50 c) There’s no money for tree house maintenance, because the clubhouse has directed that all of its two- by- four budget go to making huge, honking wooden swords to go after those kids over on Maple Ave., who look like trouble and hate freedom. 2. George W. has an early morning paper route, and even though he’s been warned time and time again that he needs to set his alarm to get up in time, he forgets and sleeps in by 40 minutes. If it normally takes George W. one hour to deliver 50 papers, how many friends of George W.’ s daddy will be needed to deliver that many papers in a third of the time? Show your calculations. 3. Dick and Donald and Condi and Karl have had their monthly club dues, of $3 each, cut to $2 by George W. One day, that big wind storm comes and knocks the tree house to the ground. It will cost $ 20 to rebuild. If George W. puts the dues back up to $ 3, how many months will it take for that increase to pay for a new tree house? a) five months b) one year c) the dues stay at $ 2, the tree house gets rebuilt, everyone gets ice cream with cookie dough in it as well as a new Game Boy, $50 is committed to make even more huge, honking wooden swords and to purchase adozen slingshots, and plans are made to get those dues down even further, to $1.75, all because George W. has borrowed a whole whack of money from that Chinese kid down the block, and everyone is going to live happily ever after. 4. George W. has reliable intelligence that a house over on Maple Ave. has cupcakes of mass proportions. Donald decides the house can be invaded, and the cupcakes seized, with only half a dozen of the neighbourhood kids. If there are 24 cupcakes, and six kids go in to get them, how many cupcakes must each kid carry? a) eight b) four c) turns out there are no cupcakes, but the six kids, the poor little bastards, are outnumbered by a pack of pit bulls who pounce on them the moment they sneak in through the basement window. 5. George W. and his friends love soda pop! They drink it like crazy! Gallons and gallons of it! Whenever they’re thirsty, and even when they’re not, they drink soda pop, and never invest any time in finding something else to drink, in case soda pop becomes hard to find, or goes way up in price. If George W. and his four friends each drink five gallons of soda pop a day, and the Middle Eastern guy who runs the corner variety store says he only has 300 gallons left, how many days will it be before they run out of soda pop? A: Trick question! There is no answer! The problem is so incredibly complex, it can only be explained through intelligent design. Email Linwood Barclay at lbarclay@thestar.ca