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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

#71

Post by acobster »

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.

Gee, thanks for giving us humanities people a voice. :/

As an artist myself, I have a huge problem with assessing qualitative analysis using something as mechanical as multiple choice. Authorial intent definitely falls under that umbrella. Rigid assessments would better show the students' ability to recognize the mechanics/techniques of a piece, such as the use of metaphor. And in general, you're really not supposed to speculate about authorial intent anyway.

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

#72

Post by RodericDay »

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…

I've always thought english class is actually cover for a bit of psychology class.

In english class you may discuss, for example, "the sky was rainy and sad stuff was happening, this is the author applying pathetic fallacy". Or, "the lady wore red, and she is the object of desire, so there is a color-idea running through the novel".

The immediate response was "no way the author put that in on purpose!". And a little debate ensues about how authors do often meticulously insert details to keep a thematic thread like that going. Famously, there's a character grid from Catch-22 floating around, that basically lays out the traits and how they were injected throughout the plot-line.

More commonly, though, what we write is imbued with the same biases that psychological studies try to extract. So an author may write a story where every male character speaks in a way that gets interpreted as "in this novel the men represent War". And the author may pipe in to say "I did NOT intend it like that!", and this is fine.

However, it wouldn't really be the end of it. Maybe the author revealed some subconscious opinions. So this is why I've always thought that "reading too much" in english literature was just doing a little bit of armchair psychoanalysis, where you are the doctor and the patient is the author, and their book their story.

(I'm a bachelor in mech eng and a masters in chem eng and haven't taken english since highschool though. take with handfuls of salt)

edit: A student a while back sent a letter to various authors and asked them if they deliberately inserted symbolism in their work. It's a cool read.

http://mentalfloss.com/article/30937/famous-novelists-symbol...

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

#73

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#75

Post by RA_Fisher »

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.

The quantification of learning horrifies this statistician. The belief that a standardized test is more objective than say a trained human assessor neglects the subjective nature of human makers of the test. It puts the humans behind a facade that creates the appearance of objectivity but not actual objectivity. The benefit of standardized tests is that they lower labor costs of assessment not that they increase the quality of assessment. It's only with that admission that a reasonable cost-benefit analysis could be done.

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

#76

Post by notahacker »

gumby wrote: post #42
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. If they can not, well maybe the authors intent wasn't what the questions are asking. This is the crux of the matter. James Joyce (just to pick someone whose work is heavily discussed) may have made a reference to a common Catholic belief and not realized it because he was embedded in Irish Catholicism. It could have ma…

The original author's "I just pause there" answer for the stanza division sounds like a classic example of the author subconsciously building in structural features, or just forgetting why she structured it that way in the first place because she associates it with performances rather than a process of writing now. (It's not as if programmers necessarily remember why every little structural feature of programs they wrote some time ago are still there, after all)

Having Googled the original poem, there's really only one place you could split it into two stanzas, which coincides with repetition of phrases from the first stanza - the only repetition in the poem - and which is where the poem switches from thinking about Monday to it being Sunday at midnight. I don't think the author put the pause there purely to save her breath...

(you can read the original poem - typeset without the stanzas - and the original questionable high school questions here http://www.jiskha.com/display.cgi?id=1394137792)

It's also worth noting that even if the assumed authorial intent is completely wrong (like many other theories of authorial intent attributed to authors who usually aren't around to question it), it's a far more reasonable interpretation than the other multiple choice answers. Though this doesn't really apply to some of the other examples

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

#77

Post by robotjosh »

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.

We could talk about the same problem in terms of why they still teach HC11 assembly in engineering school instead of teaching the industry standard arm-cortex. It is because most people in higher education are out of touch.

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

#78

Post by notahacker »

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.

According to popular legend John Lennon had a slightly different reaction to learning that his lyrics were being crudely analysed by high school teachers. He wrote "I am the Walrus".

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

#79

Post by uniformlyrandom »

The questions are surely absurd, and common core is a disaster. But I do not understand the (self-)basing of the author. Self-hatred and self-doubt are very usual emotions for teenagers, so these poems actually are very much relatable for 7/8 grade students.

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

#80

Post by admax88q »

robotjosh wrote: post #77
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.

We could talk about the same problem in terms of why they still teach HC11 assembly in engineering school instead of teaching the industry standard arm-cortex. It is because most people in higher education are out of touch.

Or maybe it's because the specific assembly you learn is far less important than the act of learning any assembly.

Learning your first programming language is a challenge, but once you have done that, subsequent languages are easier because you managed to adopt the programming mindset.

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