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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)

#451

Post by isostatic »

mcguire wrote: post #391
isostatic wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's two types of people who ask the questions 1) Those that want a response that they can consider. These are critical thinkers. 2) Those that don't care what the response is. These are smart asses. In schools the latter are far more common, and far more likely to speak out

Note that the difference is not necessarily obvious. I was once in several classes with a guy who would ask questions that were just slightly off-topic and odd---possibly about differing interpretations, possibly just trying to completely derail the class. I still don't know which of the two cases was right. I do know he managed to drag the class so that we missed rather a lot. AI classes, by the way.

Quite, and I'm sure that many actually inquisitive students are shot down enough to beat the inquisitiveness out of them, on the errant assumption they are a smartass.

I'm also sure that a student who is one day asking a genuine question, is the next day beign a smart ass. I certainly used to do that.

Kids are terrible. When there's 30 of them in the room, half of them who don't want to be there, it's even worse.

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

#452

Post by detaro »

toby wrote: post #381
kyle-rb wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like OOP, Agile, "cloud" as a concept, and cryptocurrency/blockchains are not computer science topics. The way in which blockchains are implemented, sure, that's math, applied as cryptography, applied to achieve distributed consensus, which is very much computer science. But you specifically mention crypto scams, which is much more applying the general concept of distributed consensus to different areas, and I…

OOP design is usually part of a CS curriculum (at MIT it was, at least) since it has some theoretical framing and applies to a wide variety of practical problems. I don't think I've ever heard of a class in crypto scams or Agile.

A pure CS curriculum probably won't, but one aimed at Software Engineering or whatever name you'd pick for CS + industry-applied stuff might very well have a class that includes Agile and other development techniques. (Our legal classes also touched on it)

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

#453

Post by bena »

bluGill wrote: post #446
bena wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you support putting intellectually challenged students with the rest to encourage them to do better?

That is a complex question that cannot be answered as a one size fits all. "intellectually challenged" can mean many different things. In some cases yes - it is good for the "smart" kids to learn to deal with the "stupid". In some cases no, the "stupid" just hold back the "smart". Note that this is all levels, the above average student sometimes needs to be at a lower level than the very smartest, and sometimes toget…

I was looking for a kinder way to phrase it, but someone with an intellectual disability. Someone with an IQ in the range of 35 - 50.

You're trying to waffle. Have your cake and eat it too.

If you can recognize the fact that there are times when you're just holding back some students, then propping up a gifted student in a normal class to "inspire" the rest is doing a disservice to that gifted student.

We aren't talking about children who are simply "smart", we're talking about children who are so far beyond their peers, it's clearly noticeable. It's the opposite end of the bell curve. Because we're talking about children who are testing at 135 or above.

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

#454

Post by dejaime »

skookumchuck wrote: post #58
dejaime wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good analogy. It's really hard to "measure knowledge," and in my humble opinion, as someone who once was a teacher, tests are one of the hardest ways of doing so.

> tests are one of the hardest ways of doing so I've never understood how someone could master a subject and yet be unable to answer any questions about it. In my experience, people who did well on tests tended to understand the topic, and the people who didn't do well made excuses.

That's not what I meant. I didn't say "tests are hard". I said "It's hard to measure knowledge using tests", from the perspective of whoever needs to elaborate those.

In the end, tests end up approving a lot of people that learned next to nothing, as I myself succeeded in several by memorizing for the short term. I couldn't tell how many jingles I used to go through tests. In rarer cases, they also bombing someone with a reasonable understanding of the subject that maybe just was having a bad day or was sick.

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

#455

Post by dejaime »

skookumchuck wrote: post #426
rocqua wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more about things like stressing over tests, dyslexia, ability to sit still for x hours and ability to express yourself in writing. These all affect how well you test, but do not determine your skill in the subject. Hence, having a disadvantage in any of the above gives you a system disadvantage in the educational system.

The cure for test stress is preparation, i.e. studying. Nothing works better on a test than knowing the material. The rest is just excuses.

That works for most of us, but not for all. It's basically the same as public speech, some people simply will do badly unless they go through some radical change.

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

#456

Post by dejaime »

skookumchuck wrote: post #425
Izkata wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that your experience is correct, but incomplete - it doesn't account for people who don't know the subject, but do well on the test. Particularly with multiple-choice tests, this is not only possible, but in my experience common. It became a kind of running joke among my classmates that we know our teachers, not the material - over time we just learned the quirks of whoever designed the test and e…

> learned the quirks Why waste your time learning that? Just learn the material. I'm often bemused by the effort people put into avoiding learning the material, much more than it would take to just learn the material.

Sometimes the material is absolutely unhelpful when doing a badly designed test, and you may even fail them. I had a Calculus teacher that taught 100% from the books but his tests were always 5 special case questions, that you might very well get wrong in under 45' even if you know the bread and butter.

Still learning how to do "Professor X's questions" was a guaranteed ace. Forget the subject, memorize the borderline cases, max grade. Do all exercises on the text book, also, get a second text book and do all of those too, and you might fail the test.

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

#457

Post by derp_dee_derp »

dragonwriter wrote: post #310
Veen wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Code formatting does not get poetry to appear reasonable. That's actually the whole issue being discussed. On the other hand if you don't like each line spaced as a paragraph, as it would be if you try to keep the line structure I. HN non-code text, you can, on HN, use the same convention used everywhere else that it is impossible, impractical, or undesirable to set poetry while preserving the line structure: “this i…

The whole issue being discussed is that HN made a terrible design desicion when they implemented quotes and code styling for Mobile.

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

#458

Post by pvaldes »

Torgo wrote: post #427
Intermernet wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd actually like to see a study on slipping on banana skins. When I was young I heard the phrase and soon after I tested it. Banana skins aren't that slippery unless the medium under it, or the shoe above it is slippery. Admittedly, this is just my experience, and probably not statistically significant

The type of banana you get at the grocery store now is called Cavendish. When the slip on banana peel meme was invented, the common banana was the Gros Michel, which has a more slippery skin.

Yeah, memes where widespread in 1960s, 15 years before the term meme was coined.

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

#460

Post by jodrellblank »

EliRivers wrote: post #441
jodrellblank wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's hardly being "unable to answer ANY questions"; try asking them which is more common: "the big red car" vs "the red big car", do you think they'd be unable to answer?

That's not a question about the English language. That's asking someone to use it. The question of this nature about the English language would be "how do I know what order to put adjectives in?" and the answer would be something along the lines of "opinion-size-age-shape-colour-origin-material-purpose". I do think they would be unable to answer. The rule of course then goes deeper, into ablaut reduplication and so o…

In the context of the parent comment "I've never understood how someone could master a subject and yet be unable to answer any questions about it.", isn't this your literalist side jumping in joy at being able to say "Aha, aha, I can think of a group of people who have mastered a subject but cannot answer questions about it"?

Except, they can answer questions to show what they know, they just can't answer your carefully selected subset of questions with the exact answers you demand using the terminology you demand.

Draw an arbitrary line around the allowable questions and you can make every group of experts, "people who can't answer questions about it". But what use is that?

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