Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 231 posts

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

#121

Post by Spooky23 »

Freak_NL wrote: post #52
Spooky23 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're lucky this is an engineer heavy forum. Around humanities people, your comment is like pouring gasoline in an open flame.

How so? Crudely generalising; wouldn't engineering types be more susceptible to conclude that there is only one sanctioned way interpreting some text rather than someone with a humanities background? (I happen to be both. Poetry to me seems almost by definition something that will evoke different responses and insights for each reader.)

An engineer is unlikely to have spent a lot of time around humanities academia.

The university that I attended was going through a power struggle at the time that resulted in a feminist takeover of the English and other departments. In my case, a professor in a course required by the general education requirements took issue with an essay I was required to read in front of the class (which was a story about my families experiences as immigrants), shouted me down and said that I would fail the class and there was nothing that I could do to change that. That was putting my major's GPA requirements at risk, so I had to pursue action with the administration. That wasn't an uncommon event.

My takeaway is to STFU around these topics.

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

#122

Post by caseysoftware »

Years ago, I volunteered with a high school drama department and helped them design and build sets, lighting, etc. At one point, I went along on a competition where they delivered a piece written by the director.

During scoring, they got near perfect marks across the board on delivery, characterization, etc... and were hammered on "interpretation of the author's work." I asked one of the judges about it at the time and was told "they obviously didn't study the author's other works to understand his intent."

Our education system is broken.. in silly and sometimes dangerous ways.

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

#123

Post by calebsurfs »

literallycancer wrote: post #33

I read parts of the article, skipped a bit, read the questions 32-36 and her remarks. And I don't think there is anything wrong with the questions. Maybe she's just trying too hard to make a point, but in many cases it seems like she just can't read or doesn't understand the question(?). E.g. 36 - "The poet reveals the speaker’s feelings mainly by –", then she goes on to say that most of the answers are viable, but c…

The problem isn't that the author doesn't know the answers, it's that the test is looking for 1 correct answer. The point of reading and analyzing poetry is in the process and being able to explain your reasoning coherently.

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

#124

Post by ezoe »

It reminds me a story of an Japanese test. A Japanese school was going to test student from the text of Grave of the Fireflies by Akiyuki Nosaka. It so happens there was a daughter of the author in the student. She came back home and ask her father what was he thinking when he write that novel. The father, who is also the author, said, "I was trying so hard to meet the deadline."

So she answered so in the tomorrow's test "Explain the intent of the author when he write this novel", and she failed.

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

#125

Post by Angostura »

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…

Perhaps the point is to show that you can think about the way that the words are being used and produce an interesting hypothesis about the poets' intent and technique. It doesn't have to be 'correct', just demonstrate the ability to thoughtfully analyse a text.

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

#126

Post by jjoonathan »

justifier wrote: post #93
Pitarou wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asimov being Asimov, he then went on to write a story about Shakespeare being summoned from the past to take a college course on his plays. He failed, of course.

professors teach to their opinion i took a shakespeare course at university where we were asked to read troilus and cressida and compare it to its source troilus and criseyde by chaucer i wrote that i disliked the piece because it just read like someone who recently got burned in love venting irrationally, noting that i liked shakespeare's version more because he gives the last word to pandarus(o) who uses it to comi…

Why did you omit capital letters and periods and misuse ellipses in a post which attacks academic English? These choices would be annoying enough in any post but for this one in particular they undermine your credibility.

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

#127

Post by robotjosh »

School-Cotton wrote: post #111
robotjosh wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the microcontrollers being used in new designs today are arm-cortex. Everybody who does microcontroller work except some pic weirdos is familiar with arm-cortex.

Are you under the impression the only reason anyone would need to know assembly language is to work with microcontrollers?

Yes. Every firmware engineer works with assembly but barely any x86 devs ever touch assembly.

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

#128

Post by cjmoran »

Seems to be about on-par with the way high-school English is taught, honestly (at least in my area). I remember my English teacher dedicating a full class period to the FIRST TWO WORDS in "The Scarlet Letter" (the words being "A throng"). I found it absolutely nonsensical and told her as much, but even though much of the class agreed, she shut down our complaints and kept teaching this way.

Later in the year she began scrutinizing yet another book at the molecular level, but one of the kids in our class was the son of this book's author. He ran our teacher's analysis by his father, the author, and the guy found our teacher's reasoning hilariously inaccurate.

I'm all for teaching kids literacy, but there's only so much meaning that can be gleaned from any given passage of text. At some point you're assigning meaning where there really is none, and I felt this was prevalent in some SAT questions and other standardized tests I endured during K-12. This was in a very well-regarded school district: CHCCS in North Carolina.

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

#129

Post by SpaceRaccoon »

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…

Who did the author of the paper cite?

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

#130

Post by forgotpwtomain »

hueving wrote: post #55
forgotpwtomain wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without further debating the merits of the verses in question (I thought it was self-evident)... I think it would be an accurate characterization that the author of this editorial will not be read or remembered half-a-century from now. Therefore if the purpose of education is to provide something of enduring value, I do not think it strange, or snobbish as you put it, that we should prefer to have Shakespeare, Edgar…

>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.

Post reply on HN