If I could just change one thing in education. I would outlaw multiple choice questions.
Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems
171–180 of 231 posts
Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you fail the essay because the teacher disagreed with your core claim or because you used the essay as a vessel for an irrelevant grammatical crusade?
honest answer to your question: i followed grammar you would have been proud of for this submission so i assume my grammar had little affect on the grade but seriously, is that how you want to judge? and how you think people should be judged? am i the crusader? i am just writing how i like to write, and instead of engaging with the material people question how i present my opinion? if i were commenting on every comme…
> i wish there was a way that i could write how i want to write and you could read it how you want to read it
Heh! Maybe they could peruse http://wiki.languagetool.org/adding-a-new-language
Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If anyone can answer what the 'correct' interpretation of a piece of writing is, it's the author. Well, that's very much up for debate. The Intentional Fallacy claims that authorial intent is not a valid part of artistic criticism or interpretation. That all you can judge a work on is the internal text and surrounding body of context, not notions of what was going on in the artist's head. The idea is debated, to be…
The ironic thing there is that the entire field of artistic criticism and interpretation is invalid (or at least not provably valid) and thus practitioners have no legitimate basis for claiming that particular techniques are more or less valid than others. The whole thing is built on a foundation of sand, and largely operates as a make-work jobs program for academics who would be otherwise unemployable.
I wouldn't call it "invalid", but rather say that we should not be judging the success of our children on such a subjective item. There is value in such subjectivity, and it's a cultural exercise in which we can discover more about ourselves and others, but it has no place in an objective location like a standardized test.
Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why did you omit capital letters and periods and misuse ellipses in a post which attacks academic English? These choices would be annoying enough in any post but for this one in particular they undermine your credibility.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13251451 i also avoid negative constructions.. look through my comment history you will find it is completely devoid, except now for this comment, of any instances of using: no, not, never, none do you think plato lacks credibility? have you ever read classics(o) in their original languages? theywereflippantinevenusingspacesbetweenwords(i) i would ask that if you care to develop a…
I like you.
I also, by and large, avoid capitals when I feel that doing so will not distract - usually that's in chats, notes, and git commit messages - but what you're doing is much bigger than that. It's like, I don't know, vegetarianism for language. It's fascinating. I have so many questions.
What is your full ruleset, if you have it handy? Is this just a HN thing? A social media thing? An online thing? An all the time thing? Do you make exceptions for whatever kind of formal writing you might need to do (research papers, grant proposals, cover letters, posters, etc.)? Are you in STEM, and if not, what is your field? When did you start writing like this? I'm already imagining some vivid clashes with teachers/professors if you started anywhere in undergrad or below.
Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
This reminds be of a hilarious problem I once had analyzing a poem in french lit class. Read this and tell me what you think (in english and french)? http://fleursdumal.org/poem/120 I thought the entire poem was sexual -- singular tree being a euphamism for a phallus, and the waves of the sea reverberations of an orgasm. I was given an F and sent to the principal's office. It was then and there that I decided that ma…
It says "singular trees", which I interpret as meaning "unique" or "exotic", not "only one". There's definitely more than just what you were reading there; a fair amount of symbolism (sails and rigging? sailors chanteys?).
There's a lot in there for sure. I did my due-diligence analyzing the island theme, describing how Baudelaire is evoking all the senses that bring such fond memories. I also had a lengthy section on how this poem can be interpreted sexually. You don't write that you're inhaling the fragrance of breast and not think sex. In the first stanza the exotic perfume of a woman brings the author thoughts of passion. This perfume makes him fantasize. In the next two stanzas the island is a metaphor of his fantasies. The trees and fruits are metaphors for looking at and touching the woman's body. The sails and rigging symbolize sexual pleasure, and the ocean the sexual act. In the last stanza, he comes back from his fantasy and prepares himself to indulge in the act again to the tune of the sailors chant. Flesh that out in 5 pages and that was my essay. I'm not saying it's the correct interpretation, but you can't objectively say it isn't. And the explanation works so why dismiss it? I can only conjecture that the teacher didn't want to get in trouble. Baudelaire was a pervert and his book was banned for its sexual content. I knew that coming in to the essay so given that context it's not far-fetched. Anyhow, who knows right? He could have whiffed a tit and that made him think of this one time he was on a beach with his friends and it was a super cool vacation. I prefer my explanation where the fragrance brought him to a place that John Mayer is expressing in "Your Body Is A Wonderland".
Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems
#176If 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…
This reminds be of a hilarious problem I once had analyzing a poem in french lit class. Read this and tell me what you think (in english and french)? http://fleursdumal.org/poem/120 I thought the entire poem was sexual -- singular tree being a euphamism for a phallus, and the waves of the sea reverberations of an orgasm. I was given an F and sent to the principal's office. It was then and there that I decided that ma…
Well... I probably would not have arrived at your interpretation myself, but.. I can see the outline from your comment, and presumably if you went into a little more detail in your analysis I'd accepted it as a totally valid interpretation. Probably helps that I'm on the progressive side of the "death of the author" brawl, and that I am a science student, not a humanities student.
QuercusMax objects in sister comment to interpreting "singuliers" as "only one".. The line "Des arbres singuliers" clearly indicates to me that there are many trees, regardless of whether their "singularity" means they are all "remarkable, unique" or "free-standing, isolated" (which, the more I read it, the more I understand the basis of your interpretation).
In any case, to be accurate, I think your interpretation needed to be compatible with there being many phalluses. (Phalli?) :)
Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems
#177If 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…
This reminds be of a hilarious problem I once had analyzing a poem in french lit class. Read this and tell me what you think (in english and french)? http://fleursdumal.org/poem/120 I thought the entire poem was sexual -- singular tree being a euphamism for a phallus, and the waves of the sea reverberations of an orgasm. I was given an F and sent to the principal's office. It was then and there that I decided that ma…
i don't agree with your interpretation either. i mean, you were probably a teenager at the time, and the second line is mentions breasts, which i think primed you to read the other lines through a certain lens. also, you might not've gotten an F just for what the poem said to you, but just from being really badly done, maybe. but i don't see what excuse there is for sending you to the principal's office. just sounds like your teacher was assuming malice and thereby making a problem.
my freshman year of high school i had a project where i had to write some kind of collection of poems. i ended up putting together a calendar, with certain days having a poem. there was some kind of rationale to how i picked the days, but i can't remember. i had an error printing it though, and i couldn't get the last two months to print, but i had met my requirements for the project, so i just turned it in.
this brought me a very long and irritating discussion with two counselors and the vice principal. they thought: maybe i was gay, maybe i was trans, maybe i had been molested, maybe i was being abused, maybe was planning something violent, maybe the whole thing was a big joke, and maybe i was planning to commit suicide. they wanted an explanation, and all i could say was that i was just... writing some poems shrugs.
Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
It says "singular trees", which I interpret as meaning "unique" or "exotic", not "only one". There's definitely more than just what you were reading there; a fair amount of symbolism (sails and rigging? sailors chanteys?).
There's a lot in there for sure. I did my due-diligence analyzing the island theme, describing how Baudelaire is evoking all the senses that bring such fond memories. I also had a lengthy section on how this poem can be interpreted sexually. You don't write that you're inhaling the fragrance of breast and not think sex. In the first stanza the exotic perfume of a woman brings the author thoughts of passion. This perf…
You've used the terms "teacher" and "principal" - I hope this all happened in high school. It does make it a bit more understandable that a teacher would want to stay away from risky material with a younger group of students.
Of course, who in their right mind would expect that French literature would be a nice safe area of study that doesn't rock the boat of American sexual mores, haha. (I assume this all happened in the US?)
Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems
#179The analogy is variable naming.
The skill they're testing in language arts on standardized tests is similar to skill of naming variables, objects, functions, in programming. Famously called one of the only 'hard' problems in coding.
Sure you could use your own house rules in your code and the program would execute perfectly. And sure you could follow some mechanistic system: CamelCase for classes, snake_case for functions.
But how descriptive, how much to abbreviate, how much to abstract into a concatenated phrase representing an algorithm is subjective, but worthwhile to learn nonetheless. Knowing the correct answer to this multiple choice means noticing the context, and picking out what matters the most.
Re: Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you think it would have ended the same failed exam if you did that research first and included it in your interpretation?
there's more to the story.. lie by ommission the course was set up that we would read a work and then write a one page response in class here is where i voiced my distaste for chaucer 'creating', as was presented to our class, this story while appreciating shakey's subversion of the material this garnered the 'f' for my opinions about love forlorned then at the end of each four week period we would, in lieu of exams,…
Thanks for the additional context - though it's disappointing to hear. Seems the point of teaching this kind of thing should be to encourage people to explore their own interpretations. Having a fixed path for the student to travel seems counterproductive.