Teacher:In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.
Teacher: Now, understand the problem? Solve this instance: Image copyright iStock Image caption The question has gone viral online 
  
 An apparently unsolvable exam question on a Chinese maths paper has left both students and social media stumped. 
  
 Primary school students at a school in the Chinese district of Shunqing were faced with this question on a paper: "If a ship had 26 sheep and 10 goats onboard, how old is the ship's captain?" 
  
 The question appeared on a recent fifth-grade level paper, intended for children around 11 years old. 
  
 Pictures of the question, along with students' valiant attempts at answers, surfaced this week on Chinese social media - where it triggered debate and quickly went viral. 
  
 Education officials later said the question was not a mistake, but meant to highlight "critical awareness". 
  
 Image copyright Weibo Image caption It is not clear how many points the question (circled) was worth or if it was part of a bonus section 
  
 "The captain is at least 18 because he has to be an adult to drive the ship," one student answered. 
  
 "The captain is 36, because 26+10 is 36 and the captain wanted them to add up to his age," another guessed. 
  
 One student however, simply gave up. 
  
 "The captain's age is... I don't know. I can't solve this." 
  
 Online, however, people weren't quite as generous. 
  
 "This question makes no logical sense at all. Does the teacher even know the answer?" said one commenter on Weibo, a Chinese microblogging platform. 
  
 "If a school had 26 teachers, 10 of which weren't thinking, how old is the principal?" another asked. 
  
 Some however, defended the school - which has not been named - saying the question promoted critical thinking. 
  
 "The whole point of it is to make the students think. It's done that," one person commented. 
  
 "This question forces children to explain their thinking and gives them space to be creative. We should have more questions like this," another said. 
  
 'Think outside the box' 
  
 The Shunqing Education Department posted a statement on the 26 January saying the test had intended to "examine... critical awareness and an ability to think independently". 
  
 "Some surveys show that primary school students in our country lack a sense of critical awareness in regard to mathematics," it said. 
  
 The traditional Chinese method of education heavily emphasises on note-taking and repetition, known as rote learning, which critics say hinders creative thinking. 
  
 But the department said questions like the boat one "enable students to challenge boundaries and think out of the box". 
  
 And of course, there's always that one person that has all the answers. 
  
 "The total weight of 26 sheep and 10 goat is 7,700kg, based on the average weight of each animal," said one Weibo commenter. 
  
 "In China, if you're driving a ship that has more than 5,000kg of cargo you need to have possessed a boat license for five years. The minimum age for getting a boat's license is 23, so he's at least 28." ||||| An education bureau in southwest China came out in defence of a primary school maths test when one of the questions flummoxed some online readers, a news website reported on the weekend. 
  
 Grade five pupils at a school in Nanchong, Sichuan province, were asked to determine the age of a ship’s captain if there were 26 sheep and 10 goats on the vessel, Scol.com.cn reported. 
  
 The pupils offered various responses. 
  
 “The captain should be at least 18 years old because a minor is not allowed by law to operate a vessel,” one answered. 
  
 Are you are a star at geography? Can you answer Chinese exam question looking at earth from space that left students flummoxed? 
  
 “The captain is 36 years old. He is quite narcissistic, so the number of animals corresponds to his age,” another pupil said. 
  
 A third child responded: “We cannot be sure of the captain’s age. The number of the sheep and goats is irrelevant to the captain’s age.” 
  
 The education bureau said there was no set answer to the question and its purpose was to test the pupils’ critical thinking. 
  
 “The role of education is not to produce standardised spare parts ... Each answer can reflect a different personality. A question that can have different answers is a good question,” it said. 
  
 The bureau said it would continue to set such questions, and welcomed feedback from the public. 
  
 But some online commenters dismissed the approach as nonsense. 
  
 “The question has nothing to do with mathematics ... It doesn’t test the pupils’ ability to understand maths,” one respondent said. |||||
Student:
"If a ship had 26 sheep and 10 goats on board, how old is the ship's captain?" Stumped? So are fifth-grade students in China's Shunqing district of Nanchong, where the aforementioned question appeared on a math exam for the 11-year-olds. Some gave their best guesses, with one student impressively noting "the captain is at least 18 because he has to be an adult to drive the ship," per the BBC. Another stressed that "the number of the sheep and goats is irrelevant to the captain's age," per the South China Morning Post. But a third simply wrote, "I can't solve this." Plenty on social media site Weibo, where the question was shared, decided the same, though one user came up with what might be the correct answer. Having calculated the weight of the cargo at 7,700 kilograms, or about 17,000 pounds, the user notes boaters in China are required to possess a license for at least five years before carrying loads over 5,000 kilograms. "The minimum age for getting a boat's license is 23, so he's at least 28." But the Shunqing Education Department says it didn't necessarily expect 11-year-olds to come up with that answer. "Some surveys show that primary school students in our country lack a sense of critical awareness in regard to mathematics," so the question was intended to "examine ... critical awareness and an ability to think independently," the department says, per the BBC. (It's not the first to throw a curveball question at students.)