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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

#191

Post by AlexCoventry »

mcphage wrote: post #159
thaumaturgy wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because you saw them not use their turn signal. Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history. I'm demonstrating one natural outcome of your criticism here by using proper punctuation, capitalization, and other grammatical minutiae while knowing not the damnedest thi…

> You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because you saw them not use their turn signal. They're calling into question the driving ability of a self-professed race car driver, who seems to be struggling with the basics of driving.

> seems to be struggling with the basics of driving

The writing was so clear that I didn't even notice the lack of punctuation until it was pointed out.

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

#192

Post by samirillian »

fovc wrote: post #36
jasode wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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."

I remember hearing a similar story about the adaptation of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" into Blade Runner. Ridley Scott was convinced that the protagonist was a replicant. Philip K Dick (and Harrison Ford) disagreed. In my mind, Scott had the more "cinematic" interpretation, and Dick had the more "novelistic" interpretation.

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

#193

Post by taneq »

samirillian wrote: post #192
fovc wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

I remember hearing a similar story about the adaptation of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" into Blade Runner. Ridley Scott was convinced that the protagonist was a replicant. Philip K Dick (and Harrison Ford) disagreed. In my mind, Scott had the more "cinematic" interpretation, and Dick had the more "novelistic" interpretation.

Do you think this is the source of the ambiguity in the movie? I was never convinced either way, even after rewatching the whole thing recently with the possibility in mind from the start. I think it was well done either way.

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

#194

Post by sytelus »

Why the hell for-profit companies are tasked to set up the tests? This will invariably cause disasters like this. As the article says, first they will chose only the cheapest material available. Next, they will chose cheapest employees they can possibly get by to write the tests. They might even outsource whole thing to "reduce costs". For-profits may possibly work only when end goal is well measurable, system can't be rigged and monopolies are viciously squashed. This almost never happens in education (and prison management) because of layers of bureaucracies. The problem here is not standardized tests but the fact that test creation is outsourced to for-profits. Once a for-profit gets in to driving seat they will do everything possible to make sure they can't be driven out. They have already made requirements that their test questions are "copyrighted" and can't be published or even examined by 3rd parties and on so on. In other countries, they usually have committees of senior teachers who then sets up tests with mutual agreement for token extra pay. Why do you need for-profit for setting tests?

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

#195

Post by mikekchar »

slavik81 wrote: post #132
Godel_unicode wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that should be the task. Unfortunately, this is a multiple-choice test, so the task is more "guess what I think the poet meant". There's no room for technique here.

Yet some people consistently do much better on these exams than others. There is definitely a skill to it.

I should probably stay out of a discussion like this, but I once worked as a teaching assistant in a Japanese high school. Some of my students were studying for university entrance exams and the English sections were ridiculous. As a native speaker, I was not able to read everything in the time allowed. It became very clear to me that the test makers were not interested in whether or not the students could read English. They were interested in whether or not the students were clever enough to find the correct answers without reading the English.

So I taught them how to do it.

Now, the questions I often ask myself is - Would it have been better to let my students fail the entrance exam, knowing that English would not be required in their major? Keeping that in mind, was it wrong for the test writer to write a test that favoured clever application of technique over English knowledge? What were they selecting for and what was the best way to determine it? Why is English even on the entrance exam?

Similarly, why would anyone have a test about poetry on a standardised exam if their intent was not simply to discover how well the students could jump through hoops?

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

#196

Post by thirdsun »

mhurron wrote: post #13
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…

> 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…

You're correct in saying that any interpretation but the one of the author is speculation and therefor shouldn't be regarded as absolute.

> What we teach is that works have one correct interpretation and if you do not read it that way, you are wrong.

That's not my experience. At least in my school days, in Germany, it wasn't common to only accept one interpretation as correct. As long as we could reasonably justify and explain our interpretations we were fine.

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

#197

Post by hueving »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #130
hueving wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I do not think it strange, or snobbish as you put it, that we should prefer to have Shakespeare, Edgar Allan Poe and Langston Hughes in our public schools. Yet you provide no argument supporting these choices. The only reason Shakespeare endures as well as it does is due to the dose administered to children in the school system.

Why does the history of a culture or a nation endure? Why do children know about the civil war or slavery in the south? Why not the list of American Idol winners? I don't think your response is merely incredible, it's actually a malicious and toxic kind of sophistry.

You still haven't provided any motivation for why Shakespeare should be chosen over other poets.

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

#198

Post by bryanrasmussen »

Retric wrote: post #142
jasode wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Which fails as it assumes text must have inherent meaning. It doesn't assume that. It doesn't matter whether the text does or does not have inherent meaning. The essay's point is that the reader's judgement is just as valid as the writer's. As an extreme example, the phrase "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" [1] can be interpreted by the reader as having meaning even though Noam Chomsky says it's a meaningless…

With zero context your comment is without meaning. The only thing that separates it from a randomly generated markov chain is context. Now, that does not mean the Author is infallible. But, discounting the authors intend is like ignoring a books sequels or even the second half of the text. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCeFbK-WEVE In the end by discounting the author you are left with the lowest form of criticism,…

probably the ability of people to supply a meaning and agree on that meaning amongst themselves with relative ease might differentiate that comment from a randomly generated markov chain.

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

#199

Post by halspero »

throwaway729 wrote: post #157
halspero wrote: post #69

Problem is that knowledge can't be measured because it's not a list of contents that can be checked off. Deep knowledge in one area is by its nature integrated with other areas. Thus exams and testing make as much sense as ranking authors by spelling bee.

In some sense, this problem at least indicates we're trying to do something right. Some knowledge is both necessary and testable: arithmetic, geometry, algorithmic solutions to common problems and properties of those algorithms, spelling of common words, basic grammar, many scientific facts/ideas/techniques. The learning objectives of Common Core and other curriculum are ambitious -- they want to capture that "deep k…

Well physical quantities like length, time can be measured. Also fungible goods like wheat, oil. But knowledge is differentiated, non-homogenous and subject-specific. So it isn't measurable. Memorised facts like spellings, historical dates and common types of exam questions can be counted but these aren't useful in themselves. Knowledge is information that can do things.

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

#200

Post by nradov »

al2o3cr wrote: post #27
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 went to the library, sifted through a bunch of academic journals (which the instructor believed to be the only legitimate source of truth, unsurprisingly), and found an article with a thesis and supporting evidence that paralleled my argument! I showed the instructor this paper, and just like that she said "oh, okay. The thesis makes sense."" Congratulations, you just learned the difference between making unsubst…

You missed the point. Those journal articles themselves are also nothing but unsubstantiated assertions. They may in turn cite other journal articles, but if you keep digging all the way down there's no provable factual basis to any of it.
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