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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)

#271

Post by eru »

sametmax wrote: post #234

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 certai…

> 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.

Luckily, you are overestimating the effect of education.

Kids don't pay enough attention to be so indoctrinated.

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

#272

Post by eru »

ascar wrote: post #254
sametmax wrote: post #234

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 certai…

> 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. I absolutely agree with this. This was a constant source of frustration for me in literature classes. I enjoyed exploring alternative solutions and answers. Most science teachers encouraged that, even though th…

I guess because of exactly how weak the 'right' answer's justification is, that they have to defend it so vigorously.

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

#273

Post by wccrawford »

dragonwriter wrote: post #127
sytelus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

> They basically just accelerate by full grade or two while raising the expectations for each kid to another level. That's...not accurate. Gifted programs tend to increase the degree of personalization more than anything. Yes, most people who qualify for gifted programs at probably going to end up targeting at least a full grade up in each core curriculum area, but the programs don't do a straight bump. > This is unn…

My elementary school "GIFTED" program didn't attempt to teach us at a higher grade level at all. Instead it introduced us to different ideas and challenges that normal classes didn't cover. It was everything from an egg-drop contest to programming to creating slides for a report to adopting a manatee to solving "logic problems".

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

#274

Post by wccrawford »

csunbird wrote: post #193
saagarjha wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took the GATE exam in elementary school (which has a similar 98th percentile cutoff) and the test was an absolute joke. Lots of ambiguous pattern matching that I managed to cheese through because I had a decent sense of what the test "wanted" me to put down (FWIW, I didn't end up getting anything out of it, even though I scored in the 99th percentile, because the school closed the program the following year for "la…

>because I had a decent sense of what the test "wanted" me to put down I think this is what they are actually looking for

I agree. The test was for pattern matching. The student succeeded.

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

#275

Post by your-nanny »

jtms wrote: post #139
_7fvc wrote: post #107

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 stat…

I was in the gifted program when I was in elementary school and I don’t recommend it. It took a kid like me who was already prone to social isolation and isolated him further. I voluntarily left the program after 2 years and was playing catch up socially and I wasn’t any better off academically. Don’t put your kids in that program.

In middle school I was placed, by standardized testing, into bonehead classes, where I was extremely bored, not because I was so smart that I knew it already, but because it was boring. I took a writing elective course, impressed the teacher sufficiently that she got me into eighth grade honors English, where my dear teacher lectured on grammar like it was a game of chess. I lived it, but I struggled to get my C. Getting extra credit for reading Chaucer, on my own initiative, probably made the difference--or more likely my teachers good will and support. Teachers count.

Not sure I would have ended up where I did but for their intervention.

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

#276

Post by eru »

sametmax wrote: post #245
longer_arms wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

Some are, but I think many don't. Text analysis is a lot like wine tasting: there is something to it, but it's way over the top. And if you put a brand new text and put 10 experts on it, they will come up with different interpretations. They will even claim terrible wine is good because of the bottle. There is also a huge mentality implication. See for example your reaction: you assume my understanding is bad while k…

There's wine tasting and than there's blind wine tasting. The latter has some things going for it as a proper endeavour. The former is just a pastime that's more about finding nice words than actually tasting wine.

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

#277

Post by SolaceQuantum »

sametmax wrote: post #234

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 certai…

"...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."

Funnily enough, Death of the Author is well established critical theory in English literary interpretation (criticism). On Academic merit, if you have appropriate evidence in the literature to support your theory then your theory is valid and discussable on its interpretive merits. This is taught at the college level.

I would like to have English classes teach critical reading in the classical sense of english literary theory much earlier. But I'm really not sure how to begin to teach someone how to interpret before I show logical steps towards singular interpretations first.

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

#278

Post by rayiner »

The whole poem and questions are here: 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.

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

#279

Post by theandrewbailey »

wongarsu wrote: post #256
AstralStorm wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expensive both and you do have to handle making connections and socialization...

I agree on home schooling having a socialization problem. Private schooling is kind of the opposite: the most measurable effect of private schooling are the connections formed, followed by similar effects of having a more wealthy demographic.

I was homeschooled for most of my pre-univeristy education. I disagree with the notion that homeschoolers have a socialization problem. In my mostly rural Ohio county of about 50,000 people, there were around 50 families homeschooling about 100 kids. There were regular events like drama and chess clubs. I never felt like I didn't get enough socialization.

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

#280

Post by JasonFruit »

Veen wrote: post #142
dragonwriter wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You'd have a point if the quote in question was a long prose quotation. It isn't; it's a poem and code formatting is often the only way to get poetry to appear reasonable.

Poetry is not a particularly common use case on Hacker News, though, and I'm not convinced anybody needs to optimize for it.
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