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

51–60 of 231 posts

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

#51

Post by oddlyaromatic »

ansible wrote: post #7
oddlyaromatic wrote: post #4

I thought a lot of what we learned about poems in school was overly prescriptive, and my friends and I could often invent and justify other meanings. But, unlike with multiple choice, in assignments and exams we were supposed to do exactly that. Exploring what something "might mean" is one of the ways to get into a poem. I mean, I still thought that how we studied poetry was not a very good way. But now I see it coul…

Indeed. I don't know why that sort of thing is on a standardized test anyway. We are having enough problems ensuring that all students have basic functional literacy. If they can read a paragraph from a credit card application and understand it, that will go a long way towards increasing their overall successful functioning in society. Let them do poetry interpretation on their own time and according to their own int…

Like the sibling comment I would wonder about teaching things that are not tested. Poetry exploits some awesome features of language, cognition, music, speech etc. It might be possible to integrate it in a more meaningful way in a general education, than just "interpretation" for its own sake.

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

#52

Post by Freak_NL »

Spooky23 wrote: post #45
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…

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.)

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

#54

Post by MiddleEndian »

Spooky23 wrote: post #45
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…

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

Not sure about that. While I am an engineer myself, many among my family, friends, and family friends are artists, including writers, and as far as we've discussed, none of them like these sorts of questions. Even my English teachers in school complained about standardized tests and indicated that you had to game them and figure out what the test writer wants to see.

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

#55

Post by hueving »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #43
762236 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do these terrible poets even make it on to the curriculum / standardized-tests? Snobbish much?

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.

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

#56

Post by draw_down »

jasode wrote: post #19
mhurron wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If she had known the answer, would that make the question any better? If anyone can answer what the 'correct' interpretation of a piece of writing is, it's the author. If they can not, well maybe the authors intent wasn't what the questions are asking. Of course this is a fundamental problem in the way we teach and test literature. No piece of work has a single meaning because meaning is found in the merging of the…

>If anyone can answer what the 'correct' interpretation of a piece of writing is, it's the author. To echo the other comments questioning that premise, there's also the famous Isaac Asimov anecdote: Isaac Asimov often repeated an anecdote based on this: He once sat in on a class where the topic of discussion was one of his own works. (He did this in the back of a large lecture hall so he could remain semi-anonymous).…

I agree with the teacher.

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

#57

Post by balfirevic »

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…

> If she had known the answer, would that make the question any better?

Maybe yes, maybe no.

Reasoning here is the implications which goes in single direction only: since she doesn't know the answer we can conclude the question is bad; had she known the answer, the question might be good or it might still be bad.

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

#58

Post by 762236 »

6stringmerc wrote: post #48
mirkules wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We went from Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde, Emily Dickinson and Robert Frost to something that sounds like lyrics from a '90s grunge band. I don't quite think OP's criticism is unwarranted.

If a lot of the people who criticize using old dead white people as literary texts - which, having worked in Education I know is a "hegemony" hot-button issue - it's not like other brilliant works translated (or not) could be used. Neruda, Marquez...they're completely deserving classics and, I guess the real problem here, just as hard to study and work through as any of the other traditional texts. Kids don't like ha…

So let's go straight into calculus because kids should be exposed to the good stuff, and skip going through the developmentally appropriate material that prepares for understanding and absorbing the advanced material.

I'd like to see some scientific studies that prove that teaching the classics, and skipping the "terrible" stuff, is a useful way to teach literary skills, as opposed to pushing a class (snobbery) agenda.

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

#59

Post by furyofantares »

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…

A lot of the remarks before she tries to take the test are a lot more damning, but I read her remarks on her attempt the same as you. Plus, there is actually no evidence provided that she got the wrong answers anyway! She didn't say which answers she'd finalize on and didn't give her score, she just went through the familiar process of considering all viable options (and multiple choice format sort of requires that multiple viable options exist at first glance). The article would be much stronger without her attempt to answer the questions at all, but of course would then not have such a good clickbait headline available.

I will grant that it may be bad form for the test questions to ask about authorial intent, rather than about the actual effect the author achieved, and this actually puts the author at a disadvantage here because she is coming at it like a fact finding mission -- what was I thinking on that day in the late 90s -- when they are not actually testing that.

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

#60

Post by cauterized »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #21
cauterized wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it's ridiculous to ask a student to interpret a poem on a test and expect them to interpret it in any way that resembles the test creator's interpretation. But there are some things about poetry that are not subjective and that are related to the art of writing it and thus worth teaching. In particular, metre/scansion and rhyme/rhyme schemes are crucial aspects of the art that can be identified objective…

That study has a description: squeezing all the life out of poetry, leaving a dry meaningless husk. Its possible to recognize poetry for what it is, without deconstructing it to death. I'd like to take that class.

But understanding those concepts gives you the tools to construct and improve poetry of your own.
Post reply on HN