A Socialist Math Problem Of Extreme Difficulty

Answer the following, real-world math question:

"If your mother goes to a government-subsidized supermarket and buys two pounds of sugar and three pounds of meat, how many pounds does she have?"

Think about the answer hard, because problems such as these may be coming to a common socialist core curriculum near you soon. For now, however, they are confined to the borders of that socialist paradise, Venezuela, where as AP reports [6], students study math "by calculating the benefits of government land takeovers." They practice English by reciting where late President Hugo Chavez was born and learn civics by explaining why the elderly should give him thanks.

You thought propaganda in the US was bad: "pro-administration messages scattered through the pages of Venezuela's textbooks have become yet another point of conflict in this hyper-polarized country, where Chavez's socialist party won a bare majority in the presidential elections of 2013."

However, unlike the US, the locals in the oil-rich, everything else-poor Latin American country have the temerity to act out against propaganda: "parents recently tossed books into the streets in front of some schools and burned them, acts the loyalist media compared to censorship by the Nazis in 1930s Germany. As children head back to school after winter break, many Venezuelans remain outraged over texts that treat the founder of a deeply divisive socialist revolution with the sort of reverence U.S. textbooks reserve for George Washington."

A deeper glimpse into Venezuela's indoctrination machine:

Math lessons include calculations of how much production has increased as a result of the government's agrarian reform initiative, and how much land the government still has to reclaim from private owners. Students are asked to figure out how much shoppers save at government-subsidized appliance stores created by Chavez.

Learning English? Answer the question, "Where was Hugo Chavez born?"

"They are brainwashing our kids, erasing our nation's history, and replacing it with their own version," said information technology worker Hector Cuevas, who was appalled when his son brought home the books as a sixth-grader.

Yes... and? As long as you remember to BTFD, and don't forget the Caracas stock market has been one of the best performing stock indices in the 21st century, hyperinflation and devalued currency notwithstanding, what other part of history is there to remember?

Minister of Education Hector Rodriguez defended the books this fall, and also urged critics to work with the government to improve the collection.

"Certainly they can be improved, like any human endeavor," he said, according to Venezuelan news website Noticias24. "Those who want to criticize should read the books, and when they find an error they should let us know to correct it."

* * *

An early edition of the government's social studies book shows a photo of an elderly person writing, "Thanks, Chavez" and instructs students to explain why.

One book interrupts an explanation of fractions to praise a food program "developed by the Bolivarian government to ensure that the poor can eat."

Who knew that the origins of the Obamaphone lay with Bolivarfood?

You laugh, but at this rate of full-retardedness, quite soon Venezuela's will be hired to write the financial textbooks of America's rigged, centrally-planned markets:

Geometry professor Tomas Guardia of Central University of Venezuela has spent months documenting what he and his colleagues call basic errors in math books. One defines a square as a shape with four sides, when that could be a rectangle or a rhombus.

"I'm not a historian, but if the math textbook is so problematic, there's a good chance this book is also full or errors and propaganda" he said, gesturing to a photo of Chavez embracing a child in social studies book captioned, "The future of the land of Bolivar is her children."

Cuevas, meanwhile, often pulls out his father's old math textbook to use as a reference for his son. He fantasizes about a collection of textbooks that would reflect his less-sunny vision of modern Venezuela.

"They always use examples like, 'If your mother goes to a government-subsidized supermarket and buys two pounds of sugar and three pounds of meat, how many pounds does she have?'" he said. "Why don't they use an example like, 'If you mother spends two hours in lines waiting to buy sugar, and later waits three hours to buy meat, how many hours has she waited?'"

In America it's not that different, only unlike Venezuela, very few read anything, especially not textoobks. That's what the Teevee and the Kardashians is for.

But back to our original question: the extremely difficult math problem in question has nothing to do with what is written in some propaganda-spouting textbook, but is the following: how long is it possible to have stories like this:

And avoid a full-blown, and very violent, revolution?

A hint, from a few mintes ago: ANTI-GOVT PROTESTS HELD TODAY IN EAST CARACAS’ CHACAO DISTRICT.

Perhaps the answer will reveal itself sooner than most expect.