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

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

#71

Post by gumby »

massivecali wrote: post #64
foxfired wrote: post #37

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…

I had an art show once. I walked up to a couple debating what a hand in my painting was holding. It wasn't holding anything in my creation. But art, like writing, is subjective.

But you see it was your own blindness that caused you not to realize what the hand was holding, though your subconscious expressed it. Of course you can't see this!

Yes I am being sarcastic but I actually heard this kind of comment about my then wife's work.

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

#72

Post by derp_dee_derp »

philips wrote: post #54

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 f…

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.

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

#73

Post by grandmczeb »

skookumchuck wrote: post #58
dejaime wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> tests are one of the hardest ways of doing so I've never understood how someone could master a subject and yet be unable to answer any questions about it. In my experience, people who did well on tests tended to understand the topic, and the people who didn't do well made excuses.

I’ve always had a similar feeling.

In classes where I knew the subject well, I generally did well on the tests. In classes where I had gaps in my understanding, I usually did poorly. In classes where the grades were posted publicly, my general subjective judgment of how well people knew the material matched up with their scores. Not perfectly, obviously, but the correlation has been high enough that I’ve never really been convinced that testing in general is “missing” some critical element of learning.

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

#74

Post by thatcat »

skookumchuck wrote: post #58
dejaime wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> tests are one of the hardest ways of doing so I've never understood how someone could master a subject and yet be unable to answer any questions about it. In my experience, people who did well on tests tended to understand the topic, and the people who didn't do well made excuses.

What does it mean to do well on a test covering a subjective subject?

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

#75

Post by ACow_Adonis »

xtracerx wrote: post #46

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.

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.

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

#76

Post by ACow_Adonis »

Symbiote wrote: post #19
fungiblecog wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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-languag... You can skip to the last few pages of the mark scheme to get the…

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...

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

#77

Post by nradov »

megy wrote: post #33

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?

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).

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

#78

Post by gatherhunterer »

smt88 wrote: post #49
foxfired wrote: post #37

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…

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.

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.

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

#79

Post by oska »

dejaime wrote: post #50
rdiddly wrote: post #25

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."

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.

> 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.

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

#80

Post by anbop »

foxfired wrote: post #37

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…

One mark of a good classical education is that the literal reading is more meaningful than the allegorical.
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