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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)

#321

Post by mannykannot »

rayiner wrote: post #318
mannykannot wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right that, for the purpose of this exercise, the author's intent is not the issue (though it explicitly is in the next question.) This question is not the best one to make the point; take, for example, question 35 -- personally, I would pick B but can understand why someone might pick C, which might, for all I know, be the nominal answer. The worst cases seem to be where the question-setter has a fixed idea…

Question 35 is testing whether you know how "metaphors" work. B is correct because "putting toys back into the chest" is a metaphor for the weekend's fun-and-games being over. C cannot be correct because it's referring to the text's literal meaning ("organizing things") without giving effect to the "metaphor" call-out in the prompt.

Maybe we are looking at different versions of the article (or did you intend to reply to ascar?) In the test quoted at https://www.huffpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-bad..., Question 35 is this one:

35 The imagery in lines 16 through 19 helps the reader understand –

A the shift in the speaker’s attitude

B the speaker’s unpleasantness

C why the speaker has no friends

D what the speaker thinks of others

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

#322

Post by staticautomatic »

everdrive wrote: post #290
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 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. Now you have to say why you think it is, even if you don't. Actually you have to say what you know what the status quo is, which means repeating something you read elsewhere instead of f…

Why must societal approval still be taught? And who gets to decide what society approves of? Hint: "Society" isn't the answer.

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

#323

Post by jtbayly »

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…

> 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...

This also happened to Flannery O’Connor. She once wrote the following to an English Professor:

“The interpretation of your ninety students and three teachers is fantastic and about as far from my intentions as it could get to be.”

http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/08/i-am-in-state-of-shock....

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

#324

Post by everdrive »

staticautomatic wrote: post #322
everdrive wrote: post #290

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. Now you have to say why you think it is, even if you don't. Actually you have to say what you know what the status quo is, which means repeating something you read elsewhere instead of f…

Why must societal approval still be taught? And who gets to decide what society approves of? Hint: "Society" isn't the answer.

Because it explains why the work gained popularity, and what the nature of that popularity was. Why are you reading it today instead of something else?

[edit]

There's no reason societal approval must be taught uncritically. Maybe I used a poor term. I just meant that some historical works are seen as great literature. And the values that society currently held at the time, and subsequently must be part of the staying power of a given work. Obviously other things come into play as well such as writing style and quality.

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

#325

Post by ascar »

rayiner wrote: post #289
ascar wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 think that part of the article actually perfectly captures why the author's argument is wrong. Nobody cares why she put the stanza break where she did. That's not what the question is asking. The question is asking about the objective effect of the stanza break in the context of the poem. All the student is being asked to do is recognize that there is an (objective) shift in subject from one stanza to the other, an…

My point wasn't about multiple choice tests, where I have to cross out false answers to get the right one. That this is testing the wrong skill and again only reinforces the question-creators opinion, even though I might disagree with that opinion, is a completely separate topic to rant about. (side-note: Where I'm from we nearly ever had multiple choice tests)

It's that there are multiple valid alternative interpretations for the same piece of literature. One is C), while the other one is "allows the poet to add a break, when reading it out loud." Being multiple choice, it's not the best question for this point, but the authors comment is a perfect example that seemingly objective interpretations might have nothing to do with the authors real intentions. Thus I argue that they are not that objective and there a multiple valid interpretations.

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

#326

Post by pbhjpbhj »

goodcanadian wrote: post #203
mikekchar wrote: post #32

It's not the only place in the world where the work (educating students) is jeopardised by the evaluation of that work (tests). Tests in schools are even worse, though, because they conflate 2 completely separate issues: the success of the efforts of the education system and the success of the efforts of the student. On the other hand, I will say that standardised testing is good at one thing: predicting which studen…

Upvoted specifically for: Students shouldn't confuse being educated with having a high mark on a test. It reminds me of one of my favourite quotes, attributed to Mark Twain, but a bit of googling suggests that the attribution is questionable. To paraphrase: Never let schooling interfere with your education.

UK Education Act says that children's parents are responsible for their receiving an education.

This has been commuted by the Tory government to "parents are fined if their children are not in school".

I find that very telling.

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

#327

Post by _8vlp »

rayiner wrote: post #278

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…

If these tests are about text comprehension and not interpretation of art, why use poems then? Wouldn't an advertisement, a legal text or simply a newspaper article serve a better purpose?

I've written some (bad) poems and asked people to tell me what it means for them and got some answers that are wildly different from my own. For example: I once described the sunrise as a "bleeding ceiling of the world", mainly because I needed a dramatic phrasing. But many people I asked thought it was about suicidial thoughts or death. Rather, I just wanted to emphasize the importance of (reaching) the sunrise while keeping the overall somber / grim tone I established in the first and second verse.

Which leads me to 'death of the author' vs. 'authorial intent'. What is the objective meaning of my metaphor? The readers or mine? And is my psychologists guess more valuable than that of a childhood friend of mine?

> Dissecting meaning like this is also where you get into the whole death of the author vs. authorial intent rabbit hole. And you can write whole books about that topic and which is also a quite subjective topic (I'm leaning more towards death of the author, as you might guess).

That is also just another interpretation of the metaphor. A kid on a small island country might not associate trains with a fixed daily schedule at all, because they only know about trains from other media. Your answer only is "objective" within cultures that can make that association between trains and schedules. In duringearly industrialization, the SAT answer might be that the train stands for the unrelenting progress of technology and how it sucks all live out of factory workers (see charlie chaplins 'modern times').

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

#329

Post by pbhjpbhj »

zelos wrote: post #109

Isn’t the basic problem the use of multiple choice? Being able to write a few hundred words arguing an opinion about a poem (right or wrong) has some value. Picking an arbitrarily chosen ‘right’ answer from a list has almost none. I don’t think I’ve ever had a multiple choice exam in English Lit - actually, I don’t remember multiple choice in any serious exam.

But then you'd have to pay examiners to mark it, and that means less profit. If it can't be marked by a robot, why bother with an education system. /s

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

#330

Post by segmondy »

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…

Those classes are all about conformity. It's about learning how to play the game of life and not going against the grain. "smart students" learn to read their teachers and know how to feedback the expected answers even if they don't agree or believe in it. A lesson that's very much needed in life.

A lot have not learned this lesson and this is why many of us on this site still marvel at the bullshit companies raising millions and wondering HTF! Because those "smart founders" learned how to feed BS that their audience expected back to them.

I learned this lesson when I took humanities, it was so stupid, but I knew exactly what the teacher wanted to hear when we studied architectures & paintings. It was all subjective and her own opinion. I fed her back her crap and I passed the class.

If you haven't learned this yet, it's not too late. The world is full on chicken shit.

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