37 ms·

I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)

• nxrabl 8y ago
  (2017), and original source is located at https://www.huffpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-bad-i-cant-answer-these_b_586d5517e4b0c3539e80c341 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-bad...
  • akubera 8y ago
    and a nice discussion at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13348672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13348672
  • dang 8y ago
    Ok, we added the date and changed to that URL from https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-texas-poem-puzzle-20170109-story.html https://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-texas-poem.... Thanks!
• ben509 8y ago
  This feels like the literary version of the "what in tarnation would you ever need this new-fangled multiplication for" critiques of common core math. > Holbrook wrote that asking students to guess an author's intent in writing a piece of literature is doomed to be a pointless exercise. It's pedagogy! Students aren't trying to divine the One True Meaning of the piece. They're trying to learn how to read a piece of literature, identify literary techniques, and think critically about it. If a student can produce a justifiable answer, they're winning. I agree that dissecting literature is not fun, and I agree this is probably not the optimal way to teach it. But these are precursors to learning how to read and analyze critically, and we need more of that in society.
  • fungiblecog 8y ago
    But they're not being asked to produce a justifiable answer. This is multiple choice with only 1 'correct' answer. The only way to really test comprehension is through essay questions but then the complaints on subjectivity are raised and we're back at standardised multiple choice
    • Symbiote 8y ago
      Britain manages to set questions for the exams taken at ages 16, (17) and 18 with essay-type questions, for most questions of all subjects. There's a complete paper for GCSE (at 16) English here. Choose the June 2017 one, as the November one has the source material omitted due to copyright. https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/english/gcse/english-language-8700/assessment-resources https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/english/gcse/english-languag... You can skip to the last few pages of the mark scheme to get the idea of how the long-form answers are marked. "Varied and inventive use of structural features, Writing is compelling, incorporating a range of convincing and complex ideas, Fluently linked paragraphs with seamlessly integrated discourse markers"
      • mattmcknight 8y ago
        Likewise the AP English Literature exam in the US features graded essays. https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap18-frq-english-literature.pdf?course=ap-english-literature-and-composition https://apcentral.collegeboard.org/pdf/ap18-frq-english-lite...
      • ACow_Adonis 8y ago
        yeah, but there's few things as insufferable (well ok, reading YouTube comments or something) as reading someone's writing who's learnt to write according to standardised essay marking procedures...
      • anticensor 8y ago
        > omitted due to copyright It is actually omitted due to testcenter policy, to enable reuse. You cannot reuse an exam with its answer key published.
  • Boxbot 8y ago
    they're not being taught to read a piece of literature, identify literary techniques, or think critically; they're being taught how to choose one "correct" answer from a selection of garbage. whether they can justify that choice or not never enters the picture, this is a standardized test and there is only one acceptable answer.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • earenndil 8y ago
    If you look at the original article[1], it quickly becomes clear that no answer really makes sense, and for many of the questions there are multiple answers that could reasonably be justified, not to mention that the test conflates interpretation with authorial intent. 1: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-bad-i-cant-answer-these_b_586d5517e4b0c3539e80c341 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-bad...
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • drivingmenuts 8y ago
    It’s a poem meant to be performed, not so much just read. On paper, it’s rather lifeless. I definitely buy her arguments, in that context. Perhaps if the people at Pearson had actually considered that, they could have picked something more appropriate to the task.
  • morpheuskafka 8y ago
    > If a student can produce a justifiable answer, they're winning. A multiple-choice, norm-referenced test doesn't measure justifiable answers.
  • andrepd 8y ago
    >They're trying to learn how to read a piece of literature, identify literary techniques, and think critically about it. If a student can produce a justifiable answer, they're winning. Perfectly correct, only that's not what's happening here.
  • inflatableDodo 8y ago
    >This feels like the literary version of the "what in tarnation would you ever need this new-fangled multiplication for" critiques of common core math. Don't even get me started on the way mathematics is taught at most schools. For one thing, it isn't. If English were taught the same way, the lessons would consist only of spelling, grammar and punctuation.
    • basicplus2 8y ago
      <the lessons would consist only of spelling, grammar and punctuation.> Now I for, 1 wood, find that too be useful!
• RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
  >"My final reflection is this: any test that questions the motivations of the author without asking the author is a big baloney sandwich," she wrote. "Mostly test makers do this to dead people who can’t protest. But I’m not dead. I protest." I guess that the result of this will be the test makers using long dead authors more.
• hprotagonist 8y ago
  Better than some other cases (http://archive.is/TEp6g http://archive.is/TEp6g) , in which not only is a dadaist bit of a very wild book (which i really like and recommend) used as a test question, the ending was changed so it really really makes no sense!
  • duskwuff 8y ago
    There is something deeply ironic about a standardized test asking students to analyze a Pinkwater story. It's the sort of thing he would have written a story about, really. :)
    • hprotagonist 8y ago
      he probably has, somewhere. I can't recommend Borgel enough, either; it's really good.
• kasey_junk 8y ago
  I have mixed feelings about this article. On the one hand I’m completely here for the argument that standardized tests aren’t a good way to evaluate poetry (or other sorts of literature). But in the current environment that frequently reduces to an argument that because it’s not obviously quantifiable we shouldn’t do it. That I disagree with. Most problems don’t have objectively quantifiable metrics naturally so being comfortable in frameworks that allow for that ambiguity is important.
  • deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  • mannykannot 8y ago
    "...so being comfortable in frameworks that allow for that ambiguity is important." Indeed, but a multiple-choice standardized test question is the antithesis of such an environment.
  • ppseafield 8y ago
    In the case of one of the poems in the article, the test makers incorrectly formatted the author's poem, and then asked a question about the format of the poem. That's nuts, right? She even received desperate letters from teachers asking for the answer because the test had made it ambiguous. My impression of the article is that we should be giving students better education than requiring them to master tests prepared as cheaply as possible, sacrificing coherency, sold as expensively as possible, administered by randos from craigslist with next to no training. Because that's currently the benchmark for middle schoolers.
• ykevinator 8y ago
  Therefore all standardized tests are bad, and also vaccines!
• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Standardized tests are designed to serve the needs of the school. Such tests let the teacher and school system assess multiple students efficiently and -- theoretically -- "fairly." They aren't actually designed to serve the needs of students.
  • SiempreViernes 8y ago
    Well, getting a good picture of how a student is doing is important for teaching them properly, so test that provides such a picture efficiently would be serve to clarify the actual needs of the students. The problem is that tests tend to be subverted into tools for ranking the students, which doesn't serve their learning.
    • DoreenMichele 8y ago
      A test is merely a tool. In the hands of a skilled professional, it can help cast light on the needs of the students. In actual practice, they tend to not be used that way.
  • HarryHirsch 8y ago
    If the students only knew what their needs were. My students need "word problems". Their schooling didn't teach them how to deal with ambiguity or how to make a reasoned argument. Also, in real life you won't encounter the right answer plus four decoy answers. But they want check-a-box tests. They even went to complain to administration because they weren't getting any. Apparently, I'm asking erroneous [sic!] questions in class. You despair, you do.
    • DoreenMichele 8y ago
      I hear you. I took a college class. Environmental Biology, iirc. We were running out of time and the professor announced she would be cutting a few things from the curriculum. Everyone was all "Hurrah! Yes! Less work! Feel free to cut even more and just give us As for doing nothing!" Except me. I was the killjoy going "What if you actually need to know this stuff for a future class? Or even your job?!" Everyone gave me the stink eye. I'm such a party pooper.
• philliphaydon 8y ago
  I absolutely agree I dropped out of school because of this. Because I failed writing an essay on world war 1 poetry. It’s not right to dissect art and fail a student for “wrong” answers.
  • goto11 8y ago
    It is absolutely possible to misunderstand poetry. (Not saying you did that)
    • yifanl 8y ago
      Even if you misunderstand the intent of the author, you can give a well-reasoned interpretation. From what I remember of the standardized tests, they were either more interested in marking the structure of the content than the content itself, or looking for keywords and marking off a checklist. To the snarky cynic in me, this might be good training for resume-writing, but not really how you want to teach your high school students to be good at creative interpretation.
• rdiddly 8y ago
  Perfect example of mistaking measuring for knowing. Everything that can be measured can be known, but not everything that can be known can be measured. Correct answer to the question about capitalization: "I don't know; neither do you; somebody could trivially ask the poet; regardless it's not really of primary importance; and arguably (postmodernism) the answer is up to me anyway."
  • winchling 8y ago
    >mistaking measuring for knowing Precisely. Another bugbear is questions of the type 'On a scale of 1-10, how convinced are you that measuring is a form of knowing?' with response options 'Not convinced', 'Somewhat convinced', etc.
  • everdev 8y ago
    Or simply: "In the scheme of what I want to do with my life it doesn't matter."
  • dejaime 8y ago
    That's a good analogy. It's really hard to "measure knowledge," and in my humble opinion, as someone who once was a teacher, tests are one of the hardest ways of doing so.
    • oska 8y ago
      > It's really hard to "measure knowledge" And the idea of doing so is a fairly recent (and I would say toxic) invention. The concept of graded tests, marks and class grades (A, B, C etc) are all only a bit more than 100 years old. They're a product of the industrialisation of schooling.
      • RealityVoid 8y ago
        They are a product of industrialization! But here is what's the nagging thought on my mind. This industrialized schooling has allowed basic human knowledge to be disseminated at a faster pace than ever before. The need to do so caused it to roll back on quality, sometimes greatly. But without this tradeoff, would knowledge be able to reach so many? Is there some sort of balance point to be reached? I agree that currently, education systems are terrible, but is there any way to maintain them at scale that is not?
• nothis 8y ago
  I was skeptical because the headline just sounds _too_ good. But yep, this is as stupid and cynical as it sounds. An a-b-c questionnaire about the meaning of a poem. Wow. Something went WRONG here.
• nydel 8y ago
  is this testing method: a) dumb b) silly c) aromatically identical to balls d) two of the above
• andrepd 8y ago
  >"Forget joy of language and the fun of discovery in poetry, this is line-by-line dissection, painful and delivered without anesthetic." Describes my experience with $first_language classes in school to a tee. I love reading and learning and discussing stuff. I loathed those hours where we were told to cram the (god-given) standardised interpretation of the problem, no matter how little sense it made to you or how you might have an alternative opinion or assessment. Stifling all creativity and capacity for independent thought, not to mention killing the joy of reading in millions of kids.
• mikekchar 8y ago
  It's not the only place in the world where the work (educating students) is jeopardised by the evaluation of that work (tests). Tests in schools are even worse, though, because they conflate 2 completely separate issues: the success of the efforts of the education system and the success of the efforts of the student. On the other hand, I will say that standardised testing is good at one thing: predicting which students will do well at standardised tests in further schooling. This may sound useless, but if you consider that the education system is what it is, you can help students either get better at the system or choose a different path after their compulsory term is over (like going to a trade school, running a shop, etc, etc). In my brief stint at teaching English, I always tried to separate the activities of learning English and passing tests in order to progress on to further education. If you just want to learn English, there is no need for evaluation. You don't need to fit it into X years of school. You don't have to hit some arbitrary school board imposed targets. You just have to learn English. IMHO a teacher should always be there to helps students learn (and especially help them learn how to learn by themselves). However, the other role exists and is arguably more important in the students' school years. You need to help the students align themselves with the careers that they are eventually going to take. That this involves considerable hoop-jumping is very unfortunate, but it is what it is. Students shouldn't confuse being educated with having a high mark on a test.
  • 2muchcoffeeman 8y ago
    I really hate literature as a subject, but I always thought that English as a subject was to understand how to structure things like arguments, how to be concise, to develop decent grammar. There are so many examples of things that are terrible to read because the author never edited themselves or bothered to think about what they were trying to get across to the reader.
    • mikekchar 8y ago
      Just to be clear, I was teaching English as a foreign language :-) But I agree with you!
  • goodcanadian 8y ago
• megy 8y ago
  I mean, so? She writes poems. Why should that mean she is good at analyzing poems? Are game players good at writing games, and vice-versa? Are people who eat a lot good at cooking? Are runners great at designing shoes?
  • philliphaydon 8y ago
    Poetry is a form of art. The artist has their own meaning behind their work. Art has its own meaning to the person viewing reading hearing it. If one person gets different meaning and feeling from art, to another person, who is right and who is wrong? Neither. You can use it to understand how someone interrupts the art but you can’t fail them because their interruption was different to yours.
  • edflsafoiewq 8y ago
    I agree that the author doesn't get to dictate the reading of a poem (nor does the test-maker), but these questions are usually formulated to explicitly reference the intentions of the author (the "author's purpose"). Although, now that I look at a few, it looks like the common language is "The author most likely did so-and-so in order to...". But more honest language ("What does this line mean?") would erase the veneer of objectivity; hermeneutical questions do not have "right" answers you can pick from a list of multiple choices.
    • joesb 8y ago
      > But more honest language ("What does this line mean?") would erase the veneer of objectivity; hermeneutical questions do not have "right" answers "When you say it honestly, it looks bad. So don't say it that way". Not targeting at you, obviously you are explaining the thought process of the exam maker, but that kinda shows the issue with them. They looked at the question and realize that there's no right answer for these kind of question to be made in to a multiple choice question. But instead of changing the test to something else, or making it a free text answer, they choose to play with wording of the question to hide the problem with it.
  • nradov 8y ago
    No one is "good" at analyzing poems. There are no objective standards for determining quality of analysis (beyond the trivialities of proper spelling and grammar).
• EFruit 8y ago
  >Texas' STAAR tests are administered in part by Pearson Assessments, a testing company that Holbrook called a "sadistic behemoth." I have never heard a single good thing about Pearson. Having been assessed by them in Public schools, I think the consensus is well-earned.
  • smudgymcscmudge 8y ago
    My neighbor says they pay pretty well. So there’s that. At least if you’re at the VP level.
    • pts_ 8y ago
      Off tangent but once I worked for a Pearson software contractor and they talked of their client with their nose turned up, as if they were the king's favourite in the middle ages. Cringe.
  • AllegedAlec 8y ago
    Their textbooks are pretty good. Campbell and Reece is still the bible for biologists around the world.
• foxfired 8y ago
  I was always afraid to read any classical work because no matter what you think you read, someone will tell you "Actually..." Then one day I read this beautiful quote about the old man and the sea: > “Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolism. The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.” ― Ernest Hemingway
  • leejoramo 8y ago
    I remember reading that that same quote while reading the book!
  • smt88 8y ago
    On the other hand, it makes all works of art more personal and interesting when you read into them. Even if it's not what the author intended, it may be what makes the work enjoyable to you. But I agree that forcing your interpretation on everyone else is pointless and often irritating.
    • gatherhunterer 8y ago
      Literary analysis is overly criticized due to poor teaching of humanities. I disagree with some of the interpretations that I have heard of major literary works but no one has ever forced those ideas on me, I have never been censured for proposing an interpretation that differs from another. Bad teaching is a shame but dismissing an entire academic field because you had a poor experience as a child is self-aggrandizement. As an adult one should be aware of the general public perception of one’s education. I grew up on standardized tests like the one in the article and even as a teenager I knew they were abysmal.
      • colechristensen 8y ago
        The people producing art and the people talking about what it means are so very often are mutually exclusive that it is very hard to take the people talking about it seriously. My experience with literary analysis is being forced to analyze pieces which I often believed didn't have any abstract meaning to speak of and then inventing some nonsense I thought would appeal to the teacher. The criticism is apt because my experience is generally the only experience many people have with the study of languages and literature. If it didn't exist these classes might add value to the lives of the people taking them.
• stcredzero 8y ago
  Herman Melville was said to have been amazed at the symbolism attributed to him in Moby Dick.
  • pocpoczoc 8y ago
    This massive diatribe is symbolic of Melville's inability to stick to the fucking point.
    • stcredzero 8y ago
      Don't worry, your diatribe isn't that massive. Actually, I thought Melville's point was to digress. Wasn't the point to digress into all these side details out of the joy of describing the whaling world? (So I have read in commentaries.)
• xtracerx 8y ago
  Maybe I was a jaded student, but I always thought of these questions as a game of answering what I know they want me to answer. These types of questions are obviously dumb, and they shouldn't be included in multiple-choice tests.
  • ACow_Adonis 8y ago
    perhaps I'm even more jaded, but I assumed that was the point of all assessment material and procedures. of course, this didn't really help me when I was younger, because its taken me almost 30 years to realise practically no one really cared whether assessment was valid or not, just about marks.
• pocpoczoc 8y ago
  So she's a poor student. That's fine.
• jimmaswell 8y ago
  I felt like those questions mostly weren't that bad and had a clear "best" answer.
• philips 8y ago
  Former US poet laureate Billy Collins wrote a poem about this sort of thing: The Effort Would anyone care to join me in flicking a few pebbles in the direction of teachers who are fond of asking the question: "What is the poet trying to say?" as if Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson had struggled but ultimately failed in their efforts— inarticulate wretches that they were, biting their pens and staring out the window for a clue. Yes, it seems that Whitman, Amy Lowell and the rest could only try and fail but we in Mrs. Parker's third-period English class here at Springfield High will succeed with the help of these study questions in saying what the poor poet could not, and we will get all this done before that orgy of egg salad and tuna fish known as lunch. It continues on for a few more stanzas; consider purchasing a copy of Ballistics for the full poem. The rest of the book is filled with memorable insights as well.
  • derp_dee_derp 8y ago
    Too bad I can't read it because HN quotes suck on mobile and don't work with the brave browser in Android. @dang fix your mobile css and styling.
    • lenova 8y ago
      Try this instead: https://hackerweb.app/ https://hackerweb.app/
      • akvadrako 8y ago
        It’s not much better. Still requires scrolling left and right for each line.
    • dragonwriter 8y ago
      > Too bad I can't read it because HN quotes suck on mobile HN quotes are fine on mobile. But, just to be clear, this is how HN does quotes: “quoted text” And this is how HN does code blocks def this_is(code) not_a_quote end HN code blocks abused for long prose quotations suck on mobile (and aren't appealing on desktop, either), but that's abusing code blocks.
• mikorym 8y ago
  I don't know if this holds in national exams or in many countries, but my teacher used to follow logical argument and would score that. I do remember a few cases where there were outright red question marks when essentially I was trying to make elaborate con arguments. Fortunately, we had no multiple choice questions for any of our three English tests.
• ezoe 8y ago
  That reminds me of a story of a student who got a homework "Explain the writer's intention". The writing was her father's work. So naturally, she asked her dad for the answer which he replied, "I was thinking at the time of this writing was that I want to finish this goddamn writing ASAP". She present the answer next day and teacher gave her a bad grade.
  • Dylan16807 8y ago
    That's cute but one single thought he had is not even close to a description of overall intent.
    • shard972 8y ago
      I guess the author is wrong then.
• dnprock 8y ago
  This article is fun to read. Incidentally, my daughter just took a test for a gifted program. She didn't study for it as recommended by our school district. She scored 95% in one subject. But the qualified cut-off rate is 98%! My eyes just rolled looking at that number. That means they only pick 98 and 99 percentiles. For a first grader to score that high, she needs to answer the exam perfectly. If you have some statistics training, you'll see this score is like shooting yourself in the foot. You're more likely selecting prepared test takers than gifted students. I congratulated my daughter on her score. We went out for dinner and got tasty pastries for dessert. Life is too short to waste our time on these dumb tests.
  • sytelus 8y ago
    I doubt the value of gifted programs. All parents innately want their child to be "gifted" but they don't understand what this program really means. They basically just accelerate by full grade or two while raising the expectations for each kid to another level. This is unnecessary burden on kids with a high risk that they can lose confidence or even burn out at tender age not willing to learn anything any more. I think there are probably 1 in 1000 kids who are going to earn PhD by the age of 18. May be gifted program is great for them but for everyone else parents should probably actively avoid them.
    • SpaceManNabs 8y ago
      gifted programs in lower income areas are often the only path for decent class rooms that kids there will have. The "standard" class rooms are often too interrupted, occasionally by violence. I once saw an 8th grader tackle the hell out of a large administrator. The 8th grader was giant too though.
    • ip26 8y ago
      That's exactly what some kids need though. Forget about loaded terms like "gifted", some students just pick up the material more quickly and rapidly become bored to tears. Doesn't matter why- are they good at studying? Is the material presented in the way they learn best?- they need to be challenged.
    • 8y ago
• zelos 8y ago
  Isn’t the basic problem the use of multiple choice? Being able to write a few hundred words arguing an opinion about a poem (right or wrong) has some value. Picking an arbitrarily chosen ‘right’ answer from a list has almost none. I don’t think I’ve ever had a multiple choice exam in English Lit - actually, I don’t remember multiple choice in any serious exam.
  • ultrarunner 8y ago
    Well, yes, but actually no. I grew up with both parents teaching in public schools in subjects that cannot be tested in a multiple choice format. They both sat down every night in front of the tv and shuffled papers from inbox to outbox, quickly scribbling a score on each. Very very little thought seemed to go into the content of the work, and I always wondered if they were scanning the names in the top right corner to make their judgment. I never did ask, though. Either way, I’m not sure much could change; even without giving these kids a fair shake, it still took hours to grade these. It’s a broken system and the only palatable response seems to be to throw more money at it and hope for different results.
    • mieseratte 8y ago
      > and I always wondered if they were scanning the names in the top right corner to make their judgment. This is most certainly a thing. Even funnier, I had a few A's on assignments I never even turned in.
  • pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    But then you'd have to pay examiners to mark it, and that means less profit. If it can't be marked by a robot, why bother with an education system. /s
• sytelus 8y ago
  I think few people probably knows how textbooks are written. Given millions of students spend millions of hours on these textbooks, one would expect there is a great care taken in writing textbooks. This is often not true and it was very well described by Richard Feynman. He was so repulsed by the quality of textbooks that this Nobel prize winning physicist decided to be part of committee. To his surprise, in committee meetings no one came prepared, they often missed meetings and decisions were finally made ad-hoc. He was so frustrated by whole process that (I think) eventually gave up. I suspect similar thing happens in how exams are written. People who write questions aren't often deep thinkers who took at most care but rather low level leaf nodes who happen to have time for doing more work for peanuts.
  • mikojan 8y ago
    Nobody has time for that. The hypocrisy rises to heaven when you decry "low level leaf nodes" even though they showed up and you didn't.
  • pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    In the UK exams are privatised, you buy the exams from an exam board. They often have massive errors in them and clearly haven't been properly tested - I used to do mark checking. 500,000+ kids take the papers at £30+ a time. You'd think for £15M you could afford to do things properly; but of course the key metrics are profit/bonus/wages. Moreover the boards compete in part on making their tests easier, or at least that they give the highest grades. You can't objectively compare students in such a system, it's moronic.
• atian 8y ago
  You are being measured to derive an acceptable answer based on the framework which you are taught against. Work is usually not taken as it was meant to be perceived. The presumption is naive. These are not actionable findings.
• Veen 8y ago
  High school literary criticism is just training for basic interpretation skills. It doesn't matter what's really "in" the poem, just that the student is capable of rudimentary analysis of meaning and symbolism and so on. If they went on to study literary criticism at a higher level with a decent teacher, they'd have to justify their interpretations with reference to the work as a whole, the writer's other work, their influences, the historical period, and other context.
  • neilv 8y ago
    Thank you. I think a lot of us in tech (including myself) have had only shallow/imperfect exposure to the humanities in school, and then later seen many noisy/poor/confusing examples from the field. However, I've known some people well-educated in the humanities, and (for example) I've often seen them to have on-point insight into real-world situations, while most of us with engineering/science-heavy educations are fumbling around with our overconfident opinions based on little/mistaken information. Which is not to say that there might not be a lot of noise in any field, but it would be foolish to naively dismiss someone who's invested many years in intense reading and analysis in any of those fields. Surely that person knows things and has gotten good at some kinds of thinking that we haven't even heard of. Consider the example of someone who took and Web/app framework class, but has no experience in CS basics, algorithm design, systems architecture, engineering process and collaboration, product lifecycles and maintainability, etc. They can make a site/app, and don't see what all the fuss and perceived posturing in the field is about.
  • jayd16 8y ago
    You don't find it odd that this analysis of meaning does not require meaning? Isn't it more like creative writing at the high school level?
  • AstralStorm 8y ago
    This means it is worthless for a multiple choice test and should be a write-up with argumentation. A miniature dissertation. Like, say, maturity exam is here in Poland. They're a pain to grade, have to be very careful guidelines and alert examiners.
• saagarjha 8y ago
  I'm really disappointed that the author didn't post the answers. Putting my SAT Reading hat on, my guess would be G/B, possibly C?/G/B/F.
• Grustaf 8y ago
  “I’m a native speaker of Greek but I failed this grammar test”
• evandijk70 8y ago
  Out of curiosity, I took the test for the first poem and got all questions correct. I've always been relatively good at standardised tests, and agree they don't always measure something meaningful. The author is being a little harsh, testing reading skills is difficult, and she does not provide a better alternative to evaluate students reading ability. Moreover, based on her comments, I'm pretty sure that if she were to take the text, she would score a 100%. The questions and answers: https://tea.texas.gov/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=25769814950&libID=25769814997 https://tea.texas.gov/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id... https://tea.texas.gov/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=25769814918&libID=25769814965 https://tea.texas.gov/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id...
  • goodcanadian 8y ago
    Well, I could probably figure out all of the "best" answers, but at the same time, I felt only the first question had a choice that was even remotely correct. As you say, it is more of a test of test taking skills than of reading comprehension.
• netcan 8y ago
  Funny... As I write this, the office I work with is abuzz with game of thrones talk. Does Arya fullfil the prophecy. How winter fell to the Starks. If it gets to pints after work it'll be the war of roses, white walkers as a symbol of climate change, dragons as nuclear weapons... We delve into art we like, insert meaning and extend the stories with our interpretations. Sometimes we hope, imagine or expect that the artist intended it this way. Sometimes we don't. We know this is our own embellishment. I don't think the stuff the writer is describing is a problem really. It's fine that people understand poems in ways that are unrecognisable to the poet. I think the medium of standardized testing is just awkward applied to metaphorical babble about (possibly) metaphorical art. You can standardize-test arithmetic, because they's an objective answer. Poetry & literature classes are about making students engage with stuff. Most teachers won't care if the kids read their own crazy theories into a poem or whatnot. But... imagine forcing someone who isn't into game of thrones into articulating a metaphorical theory about it. Awkward.
  • TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Now imagine your boss would grade you on how well you can recite a particular co-worker's GoT interpretation, and cut your paycheck if you get too many things wrong - or if you dared to say you disagree with that interpretation. This is how humanities in school feel. Being told some arbitrary interpretation is the truth, being forced to learn it, and being tested on it.
    • mcguire 8y ago
      And yet, when I point out that I find The Moon is a Harsh Mistress to be a story about a god-like entity that appears, saves the libertarians from their inability to play well with others, and then disappears before we get to ask any questions about its existence, or The Puppet Masters to be tedious (yeah, I get it, commies bad) and to demonstrate that Heinlein wasn't very good at seeing the consequences of his ideas,...I get a lot of crankiness from the same "humanities are about punishing disagreement" people.
  • mikro2nd 8y ago
    > We delve into art we like, insert meaning and extend the stories with our interpretations. Speaking as an artist, this is exactly what (some? most?) artists aspire to. I want to paint a (word) canvas that requires you, dear reader, to do some work,... to colour that canvas and paint in the details for yourself. A canvas that evokes your own memories, your lost loves and missed opportunities, your triumphs, your dark moments, your wins and losses. If I don't pull that off, then I've failed. There are no "correct" interpretations, there are only your interpretations.
• learnstats2 8y ago
  I work as a tutor and have tutored similar questions - sometimes I encourage students to think about 'how is the test-writer trying to test you?' And, perhaps, that is what standardized tests are intended to test: can you anticipate and meet the arbitrary requirements of someone with power over you in a particular situation? If yes, you are very employable.
• cmroanirgo 8y ago
  > "My final reflection is this: any test that questions the motivations of the author without asking the author is a big baloney sandwich," she wrote. "Mostly test makers do this to dead people who can’t protest. But I’m not dead. I protest."
• azeotropic 8y ago
  I was reminded of this passage from Plato's Apology of Socrates: "I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to myself, you will be detected; now you will find out that you are more ignorant than they are. Accordingly, I took them some of the most elaborate passages in their own writings, and asked what was the meaning of them - thinking that they would teach me something. Will you believe me? I am almost ashamed to speak of this, but still I must say that there is hardly a person present who would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves. That showed me in an instant that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them. And the poets appeared to me to be much in the same case; and I further observed that upon the strength of their poetry they believed themselves to be the wisest of men in other things in which they were not wise." So my expectation is that seventh graders would outperform the poet on this exam.
• sara123123 8y ago
  Lol very funny dog dance Just try to control your laugh https://dai.ly/x770n1f https://dai.ly/x770n1f Even these birds have love in their hearts See how this Turkey saved the life of his friends https://dai.ly/x770n4q https://dai.ly/x770n4q
• sametmax 8y ago
  I always though how silly it was for teachers to pretend they got the correct answer in a text analysis of a century old author. Apparently it's even true for authors that are still alive. Some things seemed so far fetched, so random, so made up. And yet it was supposed to be _the_ right answer. When I offered another one, even knowing the official one but disagreeing, I was graded as failing. Hell, I'm pretty certain most writers just wrote something, and never though about it more. Not all of them are pondering, rewriting every line. And even the ones that do don't necessarily do it for the result the teacher expects. And as a kid, you certainly can't say a classic author is not interesting. You can't say the text is boring, that you don't see talent in it, that you didn't learn anything from it. It has been validated by society, hence it's good. Now you have to say why you think it is, even if you don't. Actually you have to say what you know what the status quo is, which means repeating something you read elsewhere instead of forming a opinion from that and what you think. The opposite of what's school is supposed to teach. We wonder why fake news and bullshit work ? It's because we teach kids to repeat popular opinions and make up things because they look good. We teach them that not only there is a price to pay for not doing that, but that we are ok with being the ones making them pay it. People that felt like that usually went the science road. It's not a bad thing, but it's a positive feedback loop. It means fields in desperate needs of honesty and pragmatism are only welcoming bullshiters and conformists.
  • longer_arms 8y ago
    > And as a kid, you certainly can't say a classic author is not interesting. You can't say the text is boring, that you don't see talent in it, that you didn't learn anything from it. It has been validated by society, hence it's good. That is because that statement is both not useful in the context (you're there to pick it apart) and reflects pretty badly on your understanding, clearly the text has some depth, even if not consciously included, to be analysed. If your conclusion was "rubbish" when you're meant to be making a point about subtext, you're failing, its pretty simple. People include subtlety in their art even if they don't intend it. Things can not be fantastic but still reflect society, the author, your own experience, which is the point of literature analysis.
    • 8y ago
• microcolonel 8y ago
  > Dose of reality: test makers are for-profit organizations. And public schools are really really bad at buying things.
• bayareanative 8y ago
  Hehe. I believe it. So I took the SAT-I (out of 1600) with zero prep around 1994. Math - missed one question (dumb mistake) English - ~560/800 I was too depressed and anxious (undiagnosed, untreated) at the time to be able to concentrate on the critical thinking and passage questions.
• chuckgreenman 8y ago
  I grew up in Florida, a state addicted to standardized testing, and after a while you start to notice something. Standardized tests are like a meta game. I'm sure they provide a basic bench mark to see if you're literate or can do basic math but beyond that it's just pattern recognition. After a certain point you stop reading the passages, just skimming, because it's always the same types of questions and you can sort of intuit which beats of the story you need to look at to get the answer. The math sections are the same kind of thing. Match the question up to the right memorized algorithm and run it. The tests measure your willingness and ability to become good at something with no short-term, obvious benefit, which is a clever system. However, not every high school student has 200 hours to spend getting good at bullshit.
• rayiner 8y ago
  The whole poem and questions are here: https://www.jiskha.com/questions/1027961/Midnight-by-Sara-Holbrook-When-its-Sunday-and-its-midnight-the-weekend-put https://www.jiskha.com/questions/1027961/Midnight-by-Sara-Ho.... Frankly, I think the author is being a bit disingenuous. Question 5 for example: What function does the stanza break serve? She says she put it where it is because she's a performance poet and thought it should go there. One, that isn't the question. The question isn't asking about the author's subjective state of mind, but to remark on the objective function of the stanza break. The subject of the poem clearly shifts at that point from reflecting on the weekend to talking about the anxiety of the upcoming day. Out of the answers presented, (C) is clearly the best answer. Two, the author's point simply begs the question. The break sounds good there because there is a structural break in the underlying poem. Her subjective impression of where the break should go reflects an objective fact about the structure of the poem. The other questions are likewise quite straightforward. The website doesn't reproduce the full test booklet, but I suspect the prompt does not ask for the "right answer" but "the best answer out of the choices presented." The test is not asking students to plumb the depths of the author's pscyhe, but evaluate consistency or inconsistency between each answer choice and the objective aspects of the poem. It's not an exercise in literary analysis, it's an exercise in reading (knowing the meaning of words) and logical analysis. Take Question 6: "The train is important to the poem because it represents..." Who knows what the author meant the train to represent? But to an objective observer, C ("following a planned routine") clearly "fits" the text better than the other answers. That's all the test is asking students to figure out.
  • xtian 8y ago
    If you’re a good test taker, the answers they want are clear, but that’s not the point. The point is that applying this model to art, something which has been essential to the human experience for tens of thousands of years, is a stultification of our culture for no better reason than that we want to measure something. If the goal of education in a democratic society is to produce an informed, well-rounded electorate then cultivating a relationship with art is as important as an understanding of science. It seems like we’re doing something else here though. I would hesitate to dismiss the damage done by a system that produces questions like these at the societal scale.
• cascom 8y ago
  1. I think it’s generally sort of amusing to see a bunch of STEM oriented people (who generally are less than sympathetic to people who are math or computer illiterate) take the position that the art subjects they probably struggled with are BS 2. I actually think many creators/authors of art are sometimes least well positioned to describe its cultural implications/significance 3. As everyone here knows standardized tests are less about the perfect/correct answer, but rather the least bad vs the other choices
  • Zutano 8y ago
    > I actually think many creators/authors of art are sometimes least well positioned to describe its cultural implications/significance Then who is in the best position to describe the art? The test authors? A better way to judge the students' understanding of literary concepts present in a poem would be to have them describe it however they want, and grade them on how well they can cite evidence for their claims about the author's intention.
• ordinaryperson 8y ago
  > Dose of reality: test makers are for-profit organizations The College Board, the maker of the SAT and Advanced Placement (AP) exams, is a not-for-profit organization. While the test in question the author refers to is the Texas state assessment tests (STAAR), it is factually incorrect to say test makers are for-profit organizations.
  • elliekelly 8y ago
    The author never said anything about the SAT or AP exams. She was referring to the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) where her poems appear. STAAR is developed by Pearson, a publicly-traded for-profit publishing corporation.
    • ordinaryperson 8y ago
      Yes, and she generalizes about all testing organizations. To repeat hear exact line in full context: > Dose of reality: test makers are for-profit organizations. My poems are a whole lot cheaper than Mary Oliver’s or Jane Kenyon’s, so there’s that. She does not say, "Texas state test makers..." -- she just says "test makers." She singles out STAAR in the rest of the article but that graph explicitly says "test makers."
• eej71 8y ago
  I always enjoyed this story from Michael Crichton. http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/george-orwell-got-a-b-at-harvard.html http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/george-orwell-got-a-b-at-...
• IshKebab 8y ago
  > . . And I meander to its rhythm, > flopping like a fish. > Why can’t I get to sleep? > Advertisement Well said HuffPo. Are there rules on HN about linking to articles that are impossible to read because of adverts?
• childintime 8y ago
  Probably the same discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13348672 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13348672
• ineedasername 8y ago
  I'm going through a bit of this sort of thing with my oldest child right now. Sometimes there are issues with the common core specifications themselves, but holy heck are there problems with their implementation. For example, common core math standards MP2 & MP3 relate to reasoning and logical arguments. Typically these areas are targeted to 5th graders to start with. My son is in 3rd grade, yet out of the blue with no prior introduction, questions arise in a module on fractions about this. Suddenly my son is given a question like this: "Jane has 6 apples but 4 of them are rotten. Jane's friend Bob says that less than half of the apples can be eaten. DERIVE A CONJECTURE about this situation and provide evidence to support your argument." This is absolutely ridiculous. First, the concept of a conjecture has never previously been introduced. Second, even if it had been, as used here it is completely inappropriate. It has been pulled from the MP3 standard but clearly used by someone creating questions that had no idea of how to actually apply the concept or perhaps know themselves what a proper mathematical conjecture actually is, much less that its use here is basically a complete non-sequitur. The word probably should not appear in an elementary school core specification at all, as every instance I can find of it is used inappropriately as the generic layman's version of the word rather than its mathematical use, when math is the frickin' subject at hand /end rant
• brobdingnagians 8y ago
  >>> My poems are a whole lot cheaper than Mary Oliver’s or Jane Kenyon’s, so there’s that. Byron, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Oliver Goldsmith they are all free to license, could we really not use any of the thousands of poems by them and hundreds of other poets? Sure use some modern ones, but use some of the classics too.
• nwah1 8y ago
  Consistently, I was most frustrated by the demands in my English and Creative Writing courses that there were correct answers to what certain things within stories were meant to symbolize. And creative writing in general is something that doesn't work well for people who think in more literal ways. It seems like a way for those who don't to torture those who do. I wonder how much sadism is truly involved in the grading process. My guess is... a lot.
• sgslo 8y ago
  Relevant preface from 'The Adventures of Huck Finn': "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR per G.G., CHIEF OF ORDNANCE" - Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huck Finn
• ggggtez 8y ago
  When I was in highschool, this thought certainly occurred to me. On the other hand, the possibility exists that an author's intention is actually irrelevant.
• kybernetikos 8y ago
  It is well accepted within the arts that the authors interpretation should not be considered privileged over the readers. I was taught that interpretations can vary in quality - particularly if they fail to take account of salient features in the work, but there's no particular reason that an artist who may have just created what 'felt right' necessarily understood why it felt so right. I like to quote Socrates on questions like this: After I had finished with the politicians I turned to the poets, dramatic, lyric, and all the rest, in the belief that here I should expose myself as a comparative ignorammus. I used to pick up what I thought were some of their most perfect works and question them closely about the meaning of what they had written, in the hope of incidentally enlarging my own knowledge. Well, gentlemen, I hesitate to tell you the truth, but it must be told. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that any of the bystanders could have explained those poems better than their actual authors. So I soon made up my mind about the poets too: I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled them to write their poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least what they mean. It seemed clear to me that the poets were in very much the same case; and I also observed that the very fact that they were poets made them think that they had a perfect understanding of all other subjects, of which they were totally ignorant. — Socrates, quoted by Plato in The Apology of Socrates (translated by Hugh Tredinnick)
• derrick_jensen 8y ago
  In my senior year English course, there was an extra credit assignment that involved analyzing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I decided to just email the author and ask about the book, hoping he would give some unorthodox answers that I could say we're the authors true intent. He ended up sending me some wacky email with Futurama references, and he died about a month after that before I finished the paper
• sli 8y ago
  When I was looking for one of the poems mentioned, I found what appears to be a sample test[0] (or perhaps one of the past tests the author mentions) with the poem and questions about it. I figured some of you folks might like to take a look. [0]: https://s3.amazonaws.com/scschoolfiles/200/a_real_case_1.pdf https://s3.amazonaws.com/scschoolfiles/200/a_real_case_1.pdf
• DorothyPhillips 8y ago
  Are standardized tests obsolete yet? Or even tests in general?
• lumberingjack 8y ago
  This happened in real time in my high school we were one of the first classes to use the two-way classroom cameras and we interviewed a writer. Our English teacher was sure that the writer had made items in a scene that was depicted in the book red because the "red makes you feel a certain way"I straight-up ask the writer why he made the curtains in that scene red and they responded with "well they had to be a color why not red!"
• BrandoElFollito 8y ago
  Woah, my son is in the equivalent of 7th grade in France (5ème) and he would have never answered the questions correctly (not would I). We have our share of twisted poetry, but it usually is about some soldier dying on the battlefield of WWI, or about a herring nailed on the wall (those who we at school in the 80's will recognize it (...sec, sec, sec...). The answers are pretty much straightforward, at the level of a regional beauty contest when they are asked a personal question and they answer that they dream of a better world without starving children (or that the US should provide maps to the world, according to Miss South Carolina). I would hate to have my future hanging on the interpretation of someone's trip when high. Especially when 13 years old.