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Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

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Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#161

Post by [deleted] »

raganwald wrote: post #68
jellicle wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One approach to answering questions like this is to build a little model This test question isn't testing that. > What I’m saying is that answering this question well requires experience with microscopes or similar devices. It sure doesn't. It requires you to be able to read and comprehend text. That's it. The subject could have been Martian fizzbozzles instead of microscopes. > Being able to answer the question wi…

My HN friend, my argument was that the writer isn’t daft , and neither is his complaint, and I stand by that. My argument is that the writer raises interesting and useful questions, and I stand by that too. As to the fact that the question doesn’t test internal modelling, of course it does. If you made it a question about something nobody has ever seen before, then it wouldn’t test knowledge of microscopes. But it do…

[deleted]

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#162

Post by Retric »

timwiseman wrote: post #142
CodeMage wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm just too cynical, but I see that as a form of passive aggressive manipulation. The way I read that kind of comment is "I know the mob will downvote me instead of discussing the topic; you don't want to be part of the mob, do you now?"

Yes, but that is often justified and understandable. HackerNews has one of the better communities out there but I know that getting downvoted without an explanation annoys me. This happens even on HackerNews occassionally.

without an explanation your whining annoyed me and your comment added nothing to the discussion.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#165

Post by bitwize »

scott_s wrote: post #74
smacktoward wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Part of this is just a reflection of the changing economy. Shop classes were funded when there was a demand in our economy for people who made things. Now that we've outsourced the making of things to China, there's no perceived need for learning how things are made anymore; they just get made , somewhere out of sight, and when they break we throw them away and buy new ones. This is a strangely infantile way for a so…

The US still makes plenty of things. They're just not made by humans.

But if you don't know how to weld, solder, hammer, or hot-glue something together yourself, how do you expect to teach a machine to?

When my dad was an engineer, engineers knew how to work the machines. Because a technical drawing isn't just an illustration, it's a set of instructions to someone on how to make that part. For example, the engineer was likely to know, through experience, what tolerances the machines in his shop are capable of, and adjust the tolerances specified on the drawing accordingly (or if the tolerances are bigger than what is required, say "we can't make that part with this equipment").

A few years ago, my dad mentored some college kids who were incredibly smart and eager to learn. But he complained that they had almost never touched a machine in their lives. They didn't know how to design the parts properly. He had to teach them.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#166

Post by david_shaw »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #155
david_shaw wrote: post #131

Here's my simple response to a particularly complicated (and touchy) issue: children that do extremely well on standardized tests, especially from an early age, do not need them. If you're consistently in the 90+ percentile in reading comprehension, critical thinking and mathematics from an early age, you are probably not only great at standardized tests, but an intelligent child to boot. These are the kids that shou…

Everyone is not of equal aptitude. It's not possible for everyone to be book smart. Your attitude about "unfairness" is part of the problem. Schools must stop treating kids as equals when they are clearly not.

This issue is where it gets the most complicated for me. I absolutely agree with you that everyone is not of equal aptitude. There are smart kids and less-than-smart kids; athletic kids and those with two left feet. I get that, and agree with it; anyone who doesn't is fooling themselves.

Where I believe we differ in opinion is that kids should be treated differently--especially at a young age--because of this inequality. Different skills develop over time, and although certainly we should have Advanced Placement programs for those in high school, when talking about grade-schoolers, I think that we should let skill first manifest.

Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers had a pretty big impact in my formulation of this opinion: small advantages, over time, turn into huge ones. What seems like a minor issue at first can, through the course of a decade, become many times compounded. This is why the Dutch school system does not separate children into "advanced" and "slow" classes until they are at least ten years old (forgive me if I'm misquoting the text).

Getting a low score on a test, or needing to study for twelve hours instead of six to get an A+, should not limit a child from being able to reach for academic excellence. In the same token, however--and this is where I think many schools fail--the smartest children should not be held back by the less clever ones.

So, in my opinion, if it helps foster learning to build robots and rockets, then all children should. If it's a cool part of an Advanced Placement class that also requires significant knowledge of an advanced subject, sure, keep it for the "smart kids." Let's just not condemn a child to failure because of a bad test, or a bad school year when they're young.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#167

Post by unimpressive »

ktizo wrote: post #7
cryptoz wrote: post #4

I remember taking a standardized test in public elementary school in the US (I think this was the Iowa series). At the end of one section I finished early, I counted the number of questions and was planning on finding out some basic stats on the questions. We hear "pencils down", and so the break period comes around. I comply, and the teacher collects our tests. I then picked up my pencil again and started doing a bu…

Reminds me of my primary school's request to my parents that they stop me from having access to books at home as it was making me difficult to teach.

Were I to receive such a ludicrous document, after I got over the shock my first course of action would be to double time on the number of books I bring home for him/her to read.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#168

Post by InclinedPlane »

jellicle wrote: post #60
raganwald wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The writer's complaint is daft. The purpose is to test if you can read a passage and comprehend it. Has nothing to do with microscopes. From my understanding of cognitive science, the question asked is deeply flawed if you want to test comprehension without testing knowledge of microscopes. One approach to answering questions like this is to build a little model in your head of what is being described. You then answe…

> One approach to answering questions like this is to build a little model This test question isn't testing that. > What I’m saying is that answering this question well requires experience with microscopes or similar devices. It sure doesn't. It requires you to be able to read and comprehend text. That's it. The subject could have been Martian fizzbozzles instead of microscopes. > Being able to answer the question wi…

Did you read what raganwald wrote? He's saying that reading comprehension is not typically about memorization, it's often about model building. As a human reads they don't just fill up big bin with data, they build up models. When reading a narrative we will build up ideas of characters. We'll fill in more and more of their details. And when probed about the story we will fall back to our knowledge of those characters, and it may take us a while, if we even can, to figure out exactly which events in the narrative contributed to each aspect of a character.

In this case the object of the narrative is a microscope. And as people read through the text they aren't memorizing sentences or facts they are filling out the model, or character, of the microscope. But people who already have an accurate model of a microscope from personal experience will have an easier job doing so. It's similar to the way standardized tests can be racially biased. If I put forth a "story problem" about the rules of football, being familiar with those rules already gives one an advantage.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#169

Post by kamaal »

bitwize wrote: post #165
scott_s wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US still makes plenty of things. They're just not made by humans.

But if you don't know how to weld, solder, hammer, or hot-glue something together yourself, how do you expect to teach a machine to? When my dad was an engineer, engineers knew how to work the machines. Because a technical drawing isn't just an illustration, it's a set of instructions to someone on how to make that part. For example, the engineer was likely to know, through experience, what tolerances the machines in…

>>A few years ago, my dad mentored some college kids who were incredibly smart and eager to learn. But he complained that they had almost never touched a machine in their lives. They didn't know how to design the parts properly. He had to teach them.

This happens because no matter what you learn and how much you know in general, that doesn't say anything about ability to deliver in practical areas of work in a small narrow fields.

You can learn everything general about programming. But pick up a new language and you will be hitting the manual very often even to do some very trivial tasks. Or you will like to read existing real world code in that language, to learn the idiomatic way of doing things.

When you spend time solving real world problems in any field using any tool. What you are basically doing is turning yourself into a 'human database' of problems and solutions to a wide variety of problems. And you get that only by practice and experience.

Re: Kids should be building rockets and robots, not taking standardized tests

#170

Post by splicer »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #117
fennecfoxen wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blah blah blah blah. "To avoid crushing the glass slide when focusing, begin with the microscope close to the specimen and then gradually back off to focus." Blah blah blah blah. Utterly incomprehensible!

And you know what? I'll tell you why people get this wrong. It's because their brains turn off. They say "omg microscopes scary! big block of text!" and guess at answers instead of actually bothering to try and read the text. That's one reason why they get poor scores at reading comprehension: a lack of reading with intent to comprehend. Heck, if they're pressed for time and the guessing-wrong penalty is low enough,…

This is why I think the time limit on such tests should be eliminated. For many well-paying occupations, correctness is far more important than speed.
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