Heh, funny, this is from a test i gave my students:

4. Een terrorist wil een aanslag plegen op de Amerikaanse president en vuurt van op een afstand van 150 m een kogel af in de horizontale richting. De kogel heeft een beginsnelheid van 1000 m/s. Over welk afstand is de kogel gezakt wanneer hij de president raakt? Maak ook een duidelijke tekening!

For the non-dutch:

A terrorist wants to assassinate the American president and fires a bullet .... (etc)

They had to make a drawing, and several of them really made an effort of it, adding a textballoon (yes we can) or making the president black (most draw stickmen obv), adding a huge crowd of people and so on. Unfortunately, most failed the test though

I think you should at least try to (sometimes) make tests interesting/funny. Like making it a question about drugs dealers running away from police instead of an object at speed x and another object at speed y.

Certainly I can see the value of adding life, or in the case death, to a lesson.

Assessment however should be done pretty formally.

oh, absolutely, using real life examples is fine. He could very well have used the JFK assassination as an example and been ok with it. However, using Obama was probably not the brightest thing this guy's every done. All it takes is one whiney brat and the secret service will be knocking at your door.

There's also the sake of humour. With kids of that age, making something time-relevant and humorous makes it a lot easier to understand.

How did so many of your students fail that test J? Horizontal throw is one of the easiest things you learn in high school.

yea, and there's a thing line between 'making an example' and 'delivering a death threat'. I think people are way too touchy in this world, but I can't say I'd be too pleased if I heard people were using shooting me as an example for anything. Meh, whatever.

I personally suck at math, but I think it's cool as hell. Same with all the hard sciences... I'm not so good at them, but I think they're awesome. We'll see. In a few (4? 5?) years I may have a math degree.

Mm just checked, appearantly this is one of the few tests where they scored pretty well (only 10% failed). The students in that class are mainly lazy, it's not that difficult to understand only they can't be bothered to study it seems. Over half of the class failed their Christmas exams for physics... that's not so good when it's a major subject (4 hours a week).

Btw don't know if i wouldn't use our own king. Maybe next year i'll do something with Fabiola (for the foreign guys: she's the wife of the late king and someone threatened to kill her with a crossbow). Although that's a bit closer to the line i shouldn't be crossing i guess.
People often are so touchy and overreact to these kind of things. On the other hand, if one kid gets offended and has his parents call the principle, it's a lot of blabla i'll have to endure. Which really isn't worth it.

Meh ... i'll let you know next november or so what i make of the question next schoolyear

lol, why do I feel like a bad influence?

Because you are? I mean, after I started talking to you I bought a gun, started frying crawlfish and started partying with Asian bridal parties while drunk as shit. My life hasn't exactly improved.

J'accuse! Satisse!

That sounds like an improvement to me, actually.

Before my influence you did what... ate waffles and chocolate, drank wine and said 'sacrebleu!' all the time?

Don't forget being on holiday!

I laughed at 'sacrebleu'