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Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

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Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#31

Post by forgotpwtomain »

> I’m just down with a sniffly case/of sudden-self-loathing-syndrome … an unexpected extra serving/ of just-for-now-self-hate.

How do these terrible poets even make it on to the curriculum / standardized-tests?

The author suggests:

> My poems are a whole lot cheaper than Mary Oliver’s or Jane Kenyon’s, so there’s that.

What about all the classics in the public domain?! I read a lot independently as a kid but I recall that we didn't read a single English 'classic' in school until grade 7 or 8 (everything else was scholastic co. for teens / young adult junk..)

I don't have a particular side to take on the standardized testing debate, but it's probably worth mentioning that countries with extremely successful public education systems (China, USSR) used a great deal of it -- so at the least that's probably not the problem with the US public education system.

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#32

Post by kstenerud »

It's the same problem as any kind of training or testing system: The people employed to build and manage it are neither in prestigious nor high paying jobs, so there is little competition for their position, and little incentive for creative, thoughtful people to fill those positions.

It actually gets worse, because the bureaucracy mires everything in so much red tape that innovation becomes all but an impossibility, as any independent thought is quickly stamped out.

So yeah, it's no wonder that the tests are written by the dim witted and unimaginative.

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#33

Post by literallycancer »

I read parts of the article, skipped a bit, read the questions 32-36 and her remarks. And I don't think there is anything wrong with the questions.

Maybe she's just trying too hard to make a point, but in many cases it seems like she just can't read or doesn't understand the question(?).

E.g. 36 - "The poet reveals the speaker’s feelings mainly by –", then she goes on to say that most of the answers are viable, but clearly the question says "mainly", indicating you are supposed to choose the "F using similes and metaphors to describe them" since there's much more of those.

About 35 - "The imagery in lines 16 through 19 helps the reader understand –" she says that

"And of course there’s an argument to be made for A, I did shift into this mood TODAY."

But the question is about lines 16-19, which don't mention any attitude changes, so A clearly can't be the right answer.

Etc., etc.

I'm sorry, but being the author doesn't and shouldn't guarantee a perfect score.

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#34

Post by Retric »

steveklabnik wrote: post #15
mhurron wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If she had known the answer, would that make the question any better? If anyone can answer what the 'correct' interpretation of a piece of writing is, it's the author. If they can not, well maybe the authors intent wasn't what the questions are asking. Of course this is a fundamental problem in the way we teach and test literature. No piece of work has a single meaning because meaning is found in the merging of the…

Related: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_the_Author

Which fails as it assumes text must have inherent meaning.

But, it lets people avoid criticism making it a popular standpoint.

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#35

Post by douche »

automatwon wrote: post #22

any test that questions the motivations of the author without asking the author is a big baloney sandwich English 101, Homework Assignment: Write a 8 page literary essay about book-X I presented my thesis and draft to the the instructor. She told me that I was completely wrong and that this paper would receive an inadequate grade. I admit, like all my other English papers, this one was BS, too. That doesn't inherentl…

I remember I wrote a paper in college about how Odysseus' crew being turned into pigs by Circe was a thinly veiled reference to cannibalism. It was probably the least bullshit English paper I've ever written[1], but my professor was so offended by it that she wouldn't even accept it and made me write another one.

[1] My best grade on a literature paper was a complete load of horse shit where I compared the mountain in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain to a black hole. A+.

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#36

Post by fovc »

jasode wrote: post #19
mhurron wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If she had known the answer, would that make the question any better? If anyone can answer what the 'correct' interpretation of a piece of writing is, it's the author. If they can not, well maybe the authors intent wasn't what the questions are asking. Of course this is a fundamental problem in the way we teach and test literature. No piece of work has a single meaning because meaning is found in the merging of the…

>If anyone can answer what the 'correct' interpretation of a piece of writing is, it's the author. To echo the other comments questioning that premise, there's also the famous Isaac Asimov anecdote: Isaac Asimov often repeated an anecdote based on this: He once sat in on a class where the topic of discussion was one of his own works. (He did this in the back of a large lecture hall so he could remain semi-anonymous).…

My high school English teacher met Tim O'Brian once and had a discussion about Going After Cacciato. They disagreed on whether Cacciato had been killed and ended with "George, I wrote the book; I know what happened." To which he replied, "Tim, I read the book; I know what happened."

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#37

Post by jabb0r »

literallycancer wrote: post #33

I read parts of the article, skipped a bit, read the questions 32-36 and her remarks. And I don't think there is anything wrong with the questions. Maybe she's just trying too hard to make a point, but in many cases it seems like she just can't read or doesn't understand the question(?). E.g. 36 - "The poet reveals the speaker’s feelings mainly by –", then she goes on to say that most of the answers are viable, but c…

I agree. The questions seemed perfectly reasonable to me. No test is perfect, but if I had a student who couldn't get these questions right, I'd say their reading comprehension was pretty suspect.

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#38

Post by 762236 »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #31

> I’m just down with a sniffly case/of sudden-self-loathing-syndrome … an unexpected extra serving/ of just-for-now-self-hate. How do these terrible poets even make it on to the curriculum / standardized-tests? The author suggests: > My poems are a whole lot cheaper than Mary Oliver’s or Jane Kenyon’s, so there’s that. What about all the classics in the public domain?! I read a lot independently as a kid but I recall…

> How do these terrible poets even make it on to the curriculum / standardized-tests?

Snobbish much?

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#39

Post by sambe »

Regardless of what you think of the tests, it might just be possible that writing poems and analysing them is not an identical skill. I'm pretty sure that most professional sportsmen can't analyse why they play a particular shot or pass (other than "it looked good, he was open" etc).

There's probably a separate argument about why we'd want to train generations of passable poetry critics though...

Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems

#40

Post by kwhitefoot »

cderwin wrote: post #6

If she had known the answer, would that make the question any better? I remember back when I was in high school, I always sort of assumed that the authors of the poems we were tested on wouldn't be able to answer the ridiculous questions on our assessments. But even if they did, I've never been able to figure out what skills these questions were testing. If poems are open to interpretation, isn't it reasonable to thi…

Where is 'abroad'?
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