Is Military-Themed Math Problems Acceptable for 8th Graders? A Teacher’s Perspective
Last October, I was still grading exit tickets at 4:30, half a peanut butter granola bar going stale on my desk, when Mara knocked on my classroom door. She’s Javi’s mom, and Javi’s my 8th grader who draws tiny fighter jets in the margins of his notebook but still struggles with percentage conversions. She pulled up a photo of his homework worksheet on her phone, pushed it across my desk, and said, “He refused to finish this last night. I don’t know if I’m overreacting, but he won’t even talk about it beyond saying it’s wrong.”
I leaned in. The problem read: “A drone strike eliminates 3 out of 5 enemy targets in a 10-square-kilometer combat zone. What percentage of targets remain? If a platoon adds 12 new targets, how many total targets would be eliminated at the same rate?”
I’d forgotten the district rolled out this new set of “career-connected” math worksheets at the start of the semester. I’d skimmed them, graded the first few, and hadn’t paid much attention to the wording until that moment. Javi’s uncle had been injured in a deployment last spring, and the whole family had stayed with him through three rounds of rehab over the summer. “Eliminates” isn’t a math word to him. It’s a word he heard on the phone calls his mom took while his uncle was in surgery.
After Mara left, I flipped through the whole worksheet. There were 12 problems, and six of them centered on military operations: splitting assault rifles between squads, calculating new runways built at an air base, figuring out how many enemy bunkers can be destroyed with a set number of bombs. This wasn’t a one-off mistake. It was a whole theme the curriculum writers had leaned into, because the materials were free, funded by a Department of Defense education grant that our cash-strapped district jumped at to save money.
Over the next week, I asked around the teacher’s lounge. Most of my colleagues said it wasn’t a big deal. One said, “Kids see way worse on TikTok and in video games. What’s the harm in a little math practice?” Another said that military-themed problems get disinterested boys involved more than problems about bake sales or planning a birthday party. A few nodded along, said we don’t have time to rewrite every worksheet the district sends us.
I did an anonymous quick check-in with my three 8th grade classes after that, just one question on a slip of paper: If you’ve felt uncomfortable with any math problems that talk about war or the military, write that down, no names needed. Out of 82 kids, 17 said they felt uncomfortable. Three of them wrote that they have immediate family deployed or injured. One girl wrote that her family moved here from Iraq and her grandma was killed in a bombing, so she doesn’t want to do math about bombs. One boy who plays first-person shooter games every weekend wrote that it’s fine for games, but it feels weird when school says it’s just a normal thing to do math about.
That’s when the question of acceptability hits different, right? We live in a democratic country that says we teach our kids to value human life, to question violence, to respect people from all backgrounds. When we turn military operations into just another “real world” context for math, we strip out all the human cost. We act like war is just a neutral backdrop for doing percentages, not something that hurts real people, many of whom are sitting in our classrooms. It’s not about banning any mention of the military from school. It’s about whether we need to center it as a go-to theme for 8th grade math problems when there are a hundred other neutral, engaging contexts that don’t put kids who’ve been touched by war in the position to choose between doing their homework and feeling safe.
The practical part is, this doesn’t need a huge district-wide fight to fix. I’ve been doing small swaps for a month now, and it takes five minutes before class every time I assign homework. That drone problem I mentioned earlier? I rewrote it to say “A volunteer tree team plants 3 out of 5 native oak trees in a 10-acre city park. What percentage of trees still need to be planted? If the city adds 12 new trees to the plan, how many total trees will be planted at the same rate?” Same math, zero harm. For parents, if your kid says a problem makes them uncomfortable, you don’t have to march to the school board tomorrow. Just send a quick note to the teacher saying “My kid is uncomfortable with this theme, can they get an alternate assignment?” Most teachers will say yes, because we don’t want kids upset over homework. If you’re talking to your school board, ask that they flag any curriculum materials that include themes of war or violence, so parents can opt out ahead of time without extra work.
Last week, Javi turned in all his homework, got a B+ on our percentages quiz, and didn’t draw any jets in the margins that time. He just smiled when I handed it back. I still get emails from the district curriculum coordinator saying I’m not adhering to the recommended sequence. Some of my coworkers still joke that I’m too sensitive about words on a page. I don’t have a grand policy solution to end military influence in public school curriculum overnight. But I know that when a 13-year-old says a problem makes them feel sick, that’s enough. Math doesn’t need to borrow violence from war to be real world. It’s already all around them, in the things that matter to their lives, right here at school.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Is Military-Themed Math Problems Acceptable for 8th Graders