What Is ‘Family’? High School Test Question Redefines Definition, Counts This Student’s Answer Wrong

A seemingly innocent question on a high school student’s health test has caused a stir on social media. The test asks a multiple choice question asking for the definition of “family.” The student chose what he felt was the most accurate answer provided in the five multiple choices, but was docked five points for an “incorrect” answer. The student took a photo of his answer and what the school deemed to be the “correct” answer and showed it to his father. The father then posted the image to Twitter, questioning if the “correct” answer is correct at all.

The Blaze reported on an interesting multiple choice test question given to a high school student on a health exam. The question was overly basic, simply asking for the definition of family. However, there was one problem: The actual definition of family was not one of the multiple choice answers. Instead, the student saw the answers below.

My son was marked down 5 percent on a high school health test because he chose this “incorrect” definition of family. pic.twitter.com/TnisIK51Mm

— Will Saletan (@saletan) July 8, 2015

Will Saletan’s son chose the answer, “a collection of blood-related individuals living together” as the most accurate. However, the answer was counted wrong and five points were docked from his test score. The correct answer, according to the test answer key, was “a collection of individuals who care for and about each other.” So which definition is more accurate?

One astute commenter points out that none of the five choices are correct as they do not fall in line with any of the major dictionaries’ definitions. Here are the definitions of family, according to five different dictionaries.

• Merriam-Webster: “a group of people who are related to each other”
• Cambridge dictionary: “a social group of parents, children, and sometimes grandparents, uncles, aunts, and others who are related”
• Wiktionary: “A group of people who are closely related to one another (by blood, marriage or adoption)”
• Dictionary.com: “A basic social unit consisting of parents and their children, considered as a group, whether dwelling together or not”

Going down the line, it seems that the student’s answer was more closely tied with dictionary definition of family than the test key answer.

What do you think? Was the “correct” test answer or the student’s test answer closer to the actual definition of family? Should the test question be amended?

[Image Credit: Twitter]