8th grade story problem!

My 8th grader really likes math but not so much when it is a story problem. I asked why.....” it’s like this Dad, Fred has 8 berries and Paul has 20 blueberries. Calculate the mass of the sun!” Funny kid😁😁😁

Never did like that 2 sinks plus four toilets equals how many bath tubs math.

I have a theory on this. One complaint I always hear from kids is “we won’t ever use this stuff in life”. I think math would make more sense to kids if all math problems were in story form but they are so use to just solving the math problem in numerical form they dislike any deviation from that. It makes them think a little harder to deduce just what is being asked.

They are (or were) called "word problems." I was not very good at them either in my early years, but they teach a person how to think in a way to make use of math, the tool they are learning. There is no point in learning the tool and not knowing how to use it. It seemed to me that as I progressed through math courses (algebra, triginometry, analytical geometry, calculus, etc), the teachers lost all connection with how the tool could be used and became totally enamored with the tool.

The mass of the sun = why walking eagles don't fly.