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

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

#61

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]

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

#62

Post by analog31 »

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…

That which isn't tested, isn't taught. This is particularly the case if the test and the curriculum are sold by the same vendor.

I could see a scenario where "elite" parents complain that their kids spent a year in school being drilled on reading credit card applications, at the expense of things like literature and poetry. (I'd probably be one of those parents, and in my locale, educated parents are constantly complaining that the school curriculum has too much drill work and not enough liberal arts). So, in order to broaden the curriculum, the tests have to somehow be broadened.

I suspect that the best education is also the hardest to test. There will always be a conflict between education and testing.

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

#64

Post by cauterized »

kingkawn wrote: post #29
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…

You can teach and test recognition of all of those components, I agree, but none of it has anything to do with whether or not the poem is achieving anything. I am not saying that there is no context within which analysis has meaning, but that sort of component analysis I think is a misapplication of a certain kind of thinking to a medium that does not benefit at all from it. If we knew the components of good poems we…

I perceive those concepts more as tools for writing poetry than for interpreting it. (Though in Shakespeare, for instance, scansion can affect interpretation.)

Obviously the tools aren't necessary or sufficient to create good poetry (just as understanding big-O notation and recursion is neither necessary nor sufficient to write good software).

But they're tools that can be used to improve understanding of others' work, and to craft and improve one's own.

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

#65

Post by pavel_lishin »

Pitarou wrote: post #23
jasode wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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).…

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.

Which story was that?

edit: Someone else linked to it in the comments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Immortal_Bard

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

#66

Post by Sylos »

forgotpwtomain wrote: post #31

> I’m just down with a sniffly case/of sudden-self-loathing-syndrome … an unexpected extra serving/ of just-for-now-self-hate. How do these terrible poets even make it on to the curriculum / standardized-tests? The author suggests: > My poems are a whole lot cheaper than Mary Oliver’s or Jane Kenyon’s, so there’s that. What about all the classics in the public domain?! I read a lot independently as a kid but I recall…

The classics are a lot more intricate and thought out. You'd break a 7th grader's neck, if you wanted them to interpret that correctly on their own.

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

#67

Post by pavel_lishin »

762236 wrote: post #58
6stringmerc wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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) agend…

Why are those classics developmentally inappropriate? When I was a kid growing up, we read Pushkin - undeniably one of the greats, but very accessible.

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

#68

Post by nradov »

SamBam wrote: post #24
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. Well, that's very much up for debate. The Intentional Fallacy claims that authorial intent is not a valid part of artistic criticism or interpretation. That all you can judge a work on is the internal text and surrounding body of context, not notions of what was going on in the artist's head. The idea is debated, to be…

The ironic thing there is that the entire field of artistic criticism and interpretation is invalid (or at least not provably valid) and thus practitioners have no legitimate basis for claiming that particular techniques are more or less valid than others. The whole thing is built on a foundation of sand, and largely operates as a make-work jobs program for academics who would be otherwise unemployable.

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

#69

Post by halspero »

Problem is that knowledge can't be measured because it's not a list of contents that can be checked off. Deep knowledge in one area is by its nature integrated with other areas. Thus exams and testing make as much sense as ranking authors by spelling bee.

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

#70

Post by zo1 »

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.)

Spoken languages are inherently vague and open to interpretation and context. As an "engineering type", I would conclude that language is not a good mechanism for communicating concrete details without a lot of scaffolding around it to alleviate the ambiguity. Hence programming, mathematics, diagrams, etc.

On top of that, poems are meant to be "artsy". I.e. They specifically use certain words in odd ways as part of the artistry of it. It's actually a step in the opposite direction of what "engineering types" would want to do to language in order to make it less ambiguous.

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