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An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

scientificamerican.com

191–198 of 198 posts

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#191
post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Out of curiosity, what purpose does sarcasm serve you? "Ha ha, only serious". Gentle mockery can be a non-threatening way of expressing grievances and telling people difficult truths. A joke can be a very useful way of letting someone know that they're annoying us, that their work isn't up to par or that their haircut is unflattering. It's why the British excel at it - we're not very good at blunt truths, so we tend…

Or you could directly tell them they are annoying or that they work is not sufficient instead of being passive aggressive and hide behind jokes. Bonus will be that even dudes and dudettes with asperger will know what hostility is all about. Sarcasm turns factual debate about performance into personal attack - and people have full right to respond in kind.

It's communication. If you communicate what you want and not what you don't, it's successful by definition.

The point made above is that sarcasm can be a way of communicating what you want (eg, "you're late") without what you don't want ("you should be ashamed/feel bad/apologize/etc"). This unwanted implicit communication is common in blunt statements of fact and is part of why that communication style is often described using words like blunt or harsh.

In this sense, sarcasm and similar serve the opposite role to the one you describe: a way of jokingly or obliquely raising criticism without demanding a direct response. Of course, those criticisms can be personal-- but that's a property of criticism, not of its style of delivery.

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#192
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you have no value unless you work This subjunctive clause, stands alone as a true statement. How else does one earn money?

You're equating value with money. I wasn't.

> You're equating value with money.

Well, unless we regress from currency to bartering, value is measured in money.

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Personally, I think we are less ethical What does this mean to you?

When I wrote it I was thinking of the lack of statesmen. I can think of a number of politicians from 1800 - 1960 who were Statesmen. I'm thinking someone who is wise and who is willing to make sacrifices to bring about a better future for people he may not even know. I can't think of any major politician since then that really stands out as a Statesman.

Can you give a couple specific examples?

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Out of six years of reading scholarship applications, the most impressive extracurricular activity I've read about was working at McDonalds -- because it was clear that they had been given nothing in life for free, and had spent years working every available hour trying to put together money to cover the cost of their education. That demonstrates commitment in a way that volunteering for worthy causes never w…

I'm super glad to hear someone in higher education say this. Is it a common opinion in admissions circles these days? (By the by, I'm a huge fan of your work. It inspired me to get into compression several years ago and it's been a passion project ever since.)

The notion of "take students' background into account when evaluating their extracurricular experience" is very widespread. There are some students whose applications discuss volunteering in far-flung parts of the world, and that gets boiled down to "ok, so this kid comes from a rich family..." and doesn't tend to yield positive results.

But the precise details of how this happens varies from person to person on the adjudication committee at my university, and I'd assume other institutions are similar. Some people opt for demographic indicators (e.g. "this is an indigenous student, and indigenous students tend to have less access to extracurricular activities"); I don't like that approach since I insist on evaluating individuals as individuals rather than as members of collectives. On the other hand, I'm probably unique in how much I look for a narrative and self-awareness; to me, what a student has done is less important than their ability to articulate why they did it (and so "working at McDonalds" by itself didn't count for much, but "working at McDonalds because ... [story about why higher education is important to the student and why they're willing to make sacrifices for it]" was crucial).

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In 2016, the more popular claim is moral relativism, namely that there is no absolute right or wrong. No, it's not. Conservatives love to pretend that disagreement with their values is rejection of all values, but that is simply not the case.

I've never heard conservatives say that rejecting their values is a rejection of all values. I don't think that a conservative would say that liberals have no values; liberals have very clear values. I can't speak for the ones you've interacted with, but I've never heard that. Regarding moral relativism, the argument, as I understand it, is that post-modernism rejects any meta-narrative; you decide for yourself what…

> I've never heard conservatives say that rejecting their values is a rejection of all values.

Neither have I, but I've frequently heard them characterize groups that explicitly adhered to different values from theirs as rejecting all values.

> Regarding moral relativism, the argument, as I understand it, is that post-modernism rejects any meta-narrative; you decide for yourself what the narrative is.

This might distantly approach relevance (leaving aside questions of it's accuracy) if the left, either in the general sense or in the peculiar American sense that includes much of the center-right, was generally post-modernist. But that is not, and has never been, the case.

> Moral absolutism requires a meta-narrative of some form.

No, it doesn't. In fact, because you can't actually logically derive an ought from an is, a meta-narrative doesn't even add support to moral absolutism (or any other moral position.)

Any morality requires taking certain moral beliefs as unsupported axioms, and absolutism just requires that the those axioms don't include that the morality of an act is dependent on the actors view of the morality of the act.

I can assure that liberals regularly believe that conservatism is wrong independent of conservatives belief in its rectitude, which absolutely is moral absolutism.

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously there is no national standard for high school tests in Canada?

Correct. Not even provincial standards in many cases.

Quebec uses something called the R score to rank applicants to universities. The R score of a student is the sum of the student's Z score (how many standard deviations above the mean), plus the group's Z score relative to all students.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_score

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm super glad to hear someone in higher education say this. Is it a common opinion in admissions circles these days? (By the by, I'm a huge fan of your work. It inspired me to get into compression several years ago and it's been a passion project ever since.)

The notion of "take students' background into account when evaluating their extracurricular experience" is very widespread. There are some students whose applications discuss volunteering in far-flung parts of the world, and that gets boiled down to "ok, so this kid comes from a rich family..." and doesn't tend to yield positive results. But the precise details of how this happens varies from person to person on the…

I know this is off topic, but I find it really interesting to hear that you put a lot of weight or rely entirely on the narrative, which I assume would mostly boil down to the application essay (unless you also interview candidates in person). I've always thought that a significant number of Ivy League applicants hire admissions consultants and marketing experts to hone their "message" and to help them leverage their background and extracurriculars to build a likeable persona that would result in an acceptance outcome, and I believe the essay would be the primary vehicle to achieve that. Do you have a reliable way to detect when a student is really articulate and when a marketing expert has been hired to write or significantly direct the essay?

Re: An alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society

#198
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if your kid lives in one that comes up with the worst solution?

Agreed this is an important question. I think the second question is "is the worst solution significantly worse than what we have now?". I don't know the area well enough to take a stance here, but it seems the parent is claiming there is little to lose and lots to gain. So do you agree with that, particularly the little to lose part?

My pushback was against the comment above mine, which blithely suggested doing an experiment where the states would sort it out. Of course, the worst solution will be pretty far off the charts. Never underestimate how far "worst" it can get! There are states/regions that either don't have their shit together, or neglect their second-tier schools.
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