Calculate how high you'd be three hours after doing cocaine, math teacher asks class

Teachers are often looking for new ways to make their classes more engaging.

But one math teacher in Roxana, Illinois, has caused a stir for his method of educating a class of high school freshman.

“You take 600mg of cocaine, your body filters out 40% per hour, how high are you in three hours?” the unidentified teacher wrote on a whiteboard Wednesday, according to Fox2.

A second question then asked students to figure out how they would pay back their drug dealer over a period of time, the Roxana School District confirmed to the TV station.

“Student welfare is always the Roxana School District's #1 priority,” the district said in a statement to KMOV. “Unfortunately, unacceptable examples were used in a high school math class causing some parent and student distress. The district views the use of yesterday's classroom examples as a demonstration of poor judgment.

“The faculty member has apologized to students and parents for this lapse in judgment and has reiterated the intent was never to promote or make light of illicit drug use. ... The district is addressing this issue as a personnel matter according to district policy.”

The school is 90.6 percent white, 3 percent black and 3.1 percent Hispanic, according to a 2017 Illinois School Report Card.

Christy Scott, whose child goes to the school, said “wow. That's a school math problem?”

"We don't need to be teaching children how long it takes to filter cocaine out of their bodies,” she told KMOV. “That is ridiculous. That is not what we should be doing.”

But Joseph Saban, a student at Roxana Senior High School who was not in the class, suggested to KMOV that “either (the teacher) was trying to relate in some way with the kids, be funny or something like that.”

Other controversial questions from teachers have garnered attention lately, too. According to NBC News, an Alabama middle school teacher was put on administrative leave after asking questions like: “Tyrone knocked up 4 girls in the gang. There are 20 girls in his gang. What is the exact percentage of girls Tyrone knocked up?”

“Dwayne pimps 3 ho's,” another one of the questions asked. “If the price is $85 per trick, how many tricks per day must each ho turn to support Dwayne's $800 per day crack habit?”

An elementary school teacher in South Carolina gave an assignment to students in September, telling them “You are there... You are a member of the KKK. Why do you think your treatment of African-Americans is justified?” They were also told to take the perspective of a newly-freed slave.

And in Wisconsin, a 4th grade student didn’t know how to complete homework for his English class that told him to “give 3 ‘good’ reasons for slavery and 3 bad reasons.”

“I feel there is no good reason for slavery, that’s why I did not write,” wrote the student, who is black.

Officials from both elementary schools later apologized for the questions.

This story was originally published February 2, 2018 at 6:28 AM with the headline "Calculate how high you'd be three hours after doing cocaine, math teacher asks class."