
I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017) - ilamont
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-bad-i-cant-answer-these_b_586d5517e4b0c3539e80c341
======
sametmax
I always though how silly it was for teachers to pretend they got the correct
answer in a text analysis of a century old author. Apparently it's even true
for authors that are still alive.

Some things seemed so far fetched, so random, so made up. And yet it was
supposed to be _the_ right answer. When I offered another one, even knowing
the official one but disagreeing, I was graded as failing.

Hell, I'm pretty certain most writers just wrote something, and never though
about it more. Not all of them are pondering, rewriting every line. And even
the ones that do don't necessarily do it for the result the teacher expects.

And as a kid, you certainly can't say a classic author is not interesting. You
can't say the text is boring, that you don't see talent in it, that you didn't
learn anything from it. It has been validated by society, hence it's good. Now
you have to say why you think it is, even if you don't. Actually you have to
say what you know what the status quo is, which means repeating something you
read elsewhere instead of forming a opinion from that and what you think. The
opposite of what's school is supposed to teach.

We wonder why fake news and bullshit work ? It's because we teach kids to
repeat popular opinions and make up things because they look good. We teach
them that not only there is a price to pay for not doing that, but that we are
ok with being the ones making them pay it.

People that felt like that usually went the science road. It's not a bad
thing, but it's a positive feedback loop. It means fields in desperate needs
of honesty and pragmatism are only welcoming bullshiters and conformists.

~~~
segmondy
Those classes are all about conformity. It's about learning how to play the
game of life and not going against the grain. "smart students" learn to read
their teachers and know how to feedback the expected answers even if they
don't agree or believe in it. A lesson that's very much needed in life.

A lot have not learned this lesson and this is why many of us on this site
still marvel at the bullshit companies raising millions and wondering HTF!
Because those "smart founders" learned how to feed BS that their audience
expected back to them.

I learned this lesson when I took humanities, it was so stupid, but I knew
exactly what the teacher wanted to hear when we studied architectures &
paintings. It was all subjective and her own opinion. I fed her back her crap
and I passed the class.

If you haven't learned this yet, it's not too late. The world is full on
chicken shit.

~~~
i4t
"... are all about conformity."

You give them too much credit, imo. That would be way to clever, too much
'conspiracy'-like.

But, I agree that if you go against the grain, confront their bs... you're
toast.

~~~
zentiggr
Nothing to do with conspiracies, just human nature filtered through the "never
enough time or money to do it well" conditions.

There are some awesome educators out there who can inspire their students to
think and explore the world.

There are far too many more who assemble a syllabus of their own viewpoint and
expect their students to just absorb it.

------
dnprock
This article is fun to read. Incidentally, my daughter just took a test for a
gifted program. She didn't study for it as recommended by our school district.
She scored 95% in one subject. But the qualified cut-off rate is 98%!

My eyes just rolled looking at that number. That means they only pick 98 and
99 percentiles. For a first grader to score that high, she needs to answer the
exam perfectly. If you have some statistics training, you'll see this score is
like shooting yourself in the foot. You're more likely selecting prepared test
takers than gifted students.

I congratulated my daughter on her score. We went out for dinner and got tasty
pastries for dessert. Life is too short to waste our time on these dumb tests.

~~~
jtms
I was in the gifted program when I was in elementary school and I don’t
recommend it. It took a kid like me who was already prone to social isolation
and isolated him further. I voluntarily left the program after 2 years and was
playing catch up socially and I wasn’t any better off academically. Don’t put
your kids in that program.

~~~
TallGuyShort
I think there's a right and a wrong way to run these programs. Some schools
just pick a couple of outliers and make it obvious they're outliers. If you're
going to group some kids by ability for some classes, do it to everyone. Yes,
a few kids are really advanced. A few others are almost there. Don't make the
first group so uniquely isolated at the expenses of making the second group
miss out on similar opportunities entirely. I see the benefit of keeping
everyone together some of the time, but I'm screaming inside when I see my
daughter reading at a 3rd grade level next to kids who still don't know the
alphabet, and her teacher has to keep them all in one big reading group. She
has an alternative but it's strictly an addition to all her other work: which
is how it was for me, so I got A's in the gifted program, and D's in my
regular school work because it seemed pointless and stupid. My high school was
only told about the D's so it took me 2 years to get back into Honors classes.
Whoever designed that program was not _gifted_.

Let everyone spend some time grouped by ability. Don't just burden them with
more busy work. And please make sure the teachers running special programs
have a clue what they're doing to kids...

edit: Furthermore, I always thought it pathetic that I went from being a very
average student in 2 other countries, moved to America and was suddenly seen
as a gifted genius who was years ahead of my peers in math and science. I've
obviously never seen it that way - I think kids are capable of for more than
the American school system expects of them, but their intellectual growth is
being stunted at a very young age.

~~~
bluGill
There is one more thing that is important that most people miss: a "gifted"
student (whatever that means) mixed in with the rest challenges the other
students to do better.

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

~~~
bluGill
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 together.

There is a difference between subjects as well. I've been in choir with some
"intellectually challenged" kids who had great voices: I was the one being
challenged.

~~~
bena
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.

------
philips
Former US poet laureate Billy Collins wrote a poem about this sort of thing:

The Effort

    
    
      Would anyone care to join me
      in flicking a few pebbles in the direction
      of teachers who are fond of asking the question:
      "What is the poet trying to say?"
    
      as if Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson
      had struggled but ultimately failed in their efforts—
      inarticulate wretches that they were,
      biting their pens and staring out the window for a clue.
    
      Yes, it seems that Whitman, Amy Lowell
      and the rest could only try and fail
      but we in Mrs. Parker's third-period English class
      here at Springfield High will succeed
    
      with the help of these study questions
      in saying what the poor poet could not,
      and we will get all this done before
      that orgy of egg salad and tuna fish known as lunch.
    

It continues on for a few more stanzas; consider purchasing a copy of
Ballistics for the full poem. The rest of the book is filled with memorable
insights as well.

~~~
derp_dee_derp
Too bad I can't read it because HN quotes suck on mobile and don't work with
the brave browser in Android.

@dang fix your mobile css and styling.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Too bad I can't read it because HN quotes suck on mobile

HN quotes are fine on mobile. But, just to be clear, this is how HN does
quotes:

“quoted text”

And this is how HN does code blocks

    
    
      def this_is(code)
        not_a_quote
      end
    

HN code blocks abused for long prose quotations suck on mobile (and aren't
appealing on desktop, either), but that's abusing code blocks.

~~~
Veen
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.

~~~
dragonwriter
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 is a line of poetry / and this is another line / each separated from the
next with / a solidus set with space / on either side.”

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

------
rayiner
The whole poem and questions are here:
[https://www.jiskha.com/questions/1027961/Midnight-by-Sara-
Ho...](https://www.jiskha.com/questions/1027961/Midnight-by-Sara-Holbrook-
When-its-Sunday-and-its-midnight-the-weekend-put).

Frankly, I think the author is being a bit disingenuous. Question 5 for
example: What function does the stanza break serve? She says she put it where
it is because she's a performance poet and thought it should go there. One,
that isn't the question. The question isn't asking about the author's
subjective state of mind, but to remark on the objective function of the
stanza break. The subject of the poem clearly shifts at that point from
reflecting on the weekend to talking about the anxiety of the upcoming day.
Out of the answers presented, (C) is clearly the best answer. Two, the
author's point simply begs the question. The break sounds good there because
there is a structural break in the underlying poem. Her subjective impression
of where the break should go reflects an objective fact about the structure of
the poem.

The other questions are likewise quite straightforward. The website doesn't
reproduce the full test booklet, but I suspect the prompt does not ask for the
"right answer" but "the best answer out of the choices presented." The test is
not asking students to plumb the depths of the author's pscyhe, but evaluate
consistency or inconsistency between each answer choice and the objective
aspects of the poem. It's not an exercise in literary analysis, it's an
exercise in reading (knowing the meaning of words) and logical analysis.

Take Question 6: "The train is important to the poem because it represents..."
Who knows what the author _meant_ the train to represent? But to an objective
observer, C ("following a planned routine") clearly "fits" the text better
than the other answers. That's all the test is asking students to figure out.

~~~
xtian
If you’re a good test taker, the answers they want are clear, but that’s not
the point. The point is that applying this model to art, something which has
been essential to the human experience for tens of thousands of years, is a
stultification of our culture for no better reason than that we want to
measure something.

If the goal of education in a democratic society is to produce an informed,
well-rounded electorate then cultivating a relationship with art is as
important as an understanding of science. It seems like we’re doing something
else here though. I would hesitate to dismiss the damage done by a system that
produces questions like these at the societal scale.

~~~
rayiner
This is a reading test, not an art test. Here, whatever "art" is in the poem,
there is also text with plain, objective meaning and discernible structure.
The test is directed to the latter, not the former. And that is, by far, the
more important thing to teach children. An informed citizenry in a democracy
doesn't need art. They do need to be able to convey their thoughts in a
structured, clear manner in writing.

~~~
radford-neal
If that's the objective, then give them a piece of technical writing, and then
ask them whether the nuts should be screwed tight before or after the wooden
pieces are put in their slots.

I think we all know why they're using poetry, though. They want to PRETEND to
be testing ability at deep literary criticism.

~~~
rayiner
These tests also usually include scientific articles that are used to test
whether students can figure out basic facts presented in an article. But
that's only one part of reading comprehension. Students also must be able to
understand the structure of the text, themes, use of devices like metaphors
and similes, etc. These are higher-level concepts, but still objective ones.
And they are present in all types of writing, not only technical articles.
This particular set of questions is directed at evaluating those skills.

The tests don't purported to be "testing ability at deep literary criticism."
The kids aren't learning poetry, they're reading poetry to help develop
general reading comprehension skills. If you look at the STAARS curriculum for
Grade 8, the tested skills include:

> Students understand, make inferences and draw conclusions about the
> structure and elements of poetry and provide evidence from text to support
> their understanding.

That's _exactly_ what the questions are asking about: the structure and
elements of the poem.

------
rdiddly
Perfect example of mistaking measuring for knowing. Everything that can be
measured can be known, but not everything that can be known can be measured.

Correct answer to the question about capitalization: "I don't know; neither do
you; somebody could trivially ask the poet; regardless it's not really of
primary importance; and arguably (postmodernism) the answer is up to me
anyway."

~~~
dejaime
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.

~~~
skookumchuck
> 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.

~~~
cgriswald
It’s because tests aren’t just testing knowledge. They are testing the ability
to express the entirety of that knowledge under completely arbitrary
conditions (time limits, schedules, no references, etc.) with outsized
consequences for mistakes.

Also good tests are hard to write. I’ve seen T/F questions that could go
either way. Multiple choice questions with more than one correct answer.
(Professors will tell you to choose the “best” answer. But that’s a matter of
opinion in many, if not all, cases.)

I think what someone can DO with their knowledge is more important than what
individual bits of knowledge they maintained. I’d rather hire or work with
someone who can get things done and knows certain algorithms exist than hire
or work with someone who can’t get anything done but can recite the same
algorithms from memory. Tests favor the second person. (I was that person in
HS calculus. Aced the class without understanding a thing just because I have
a gift for remembering and applying rules. I had no idea what I was doing.)

~~~
stordoff
> Also good tests are hard to write. I’ve seen T/F questions that could go
> either way. Multiple choice questions with more than one correct answer.
> (Professors will tell you to choose the “best” answer. But that’s a matter
> of opinion in many, if not all, cases.)

This is why I am so glad that all of my university exams (and the _vast_
majority of exams before that, at least post-Y9/age 13) were open-ended
questions[1], then marked by someone who will (likely) know the subject better
than you even will. Even if you couldn't get the the answer, but could
understand and articulate the starting points, or made a compelling argument
but misread or misunderstood part of the question, you will at least get
partial credit. The physics exams would also have a standardised formulae
reference sheet.

[1] A typical paper would be three hours, answering 5-6 questions, and a
typical subquestion can be as open-ended as "Write brief notes about a tree
representation of functional arrays, subscripted by positive integers
according to their representation in binary notation. How efficient are the
lookup and update operations?"

------
mikekchar
It's not the only place in the world where the work (educating students) is
jeopardised by the evaluation of that work (tests). Tests in schools are even
worse, though, because they conflate 2 completely separate issues: the success
of the efforts of the education system and the success of the efforts of the
student.

On the other hand, I will say that standardised testing is good at one thing:
predicting which students will do well at standardised tests in further
schooling. This may sound useless, but if you consider that the education
system is what it is, you _can_ help students either get better at the system
or choose a different path after their compulsory term is over (like going to
a trade school, running a shop, etc, etc).

In my brief stint at teaching English, I always tried to separate the
activities of learning English and passing tests in order to progress on to
further education. If you just want to learn English, there is _no need_ for
evaluation. You don't need to fit it into X years of school. You don't have to
hit some arbitrary school board imposed targets. You just have to learn
English. IMHO a teacher should always be there to helps students learn (and
especially help them learn how to learn by themselves).

However, the other role exists and is arguably more important in the students'
school years. You need to help the students align themselves with the careers
that they are eventually going to take. That this involves considerable hoop-
jumping is very unfortunate, but it is what it is. Students shouldn't confuse
being educated with having a high mark on a test.

~~~
goodcanadian
Upvoted specifically for:

 _Students shouldn 't confuse being educated with having a high mark on a
test._

It reminds me of one of my favourite quotes, attributed to Mark Twain, but a
bit of googling suggests that the attribution is questionable. To paraphrase:

 _Never let schooling interfere with your education._

~~~
pbhjpbhj
UK Education Act says that children's parents are responsible for their
receiving an education.

This has been commuted by the Tory government to "parents are fined if their
children are not in school".

I find that very telling.

------
Veen
High school literary criticism is just training for basic interpretation
skills. It doesn't matter what's really "in" the poem, just that the student
is capable of rudimentary analysis of meaning and symbolism and so on. If they
went on to study literary criticism at a higher level with a decent teacher,
they'd have to justify their interpretations with reference to the work as a
whole, the writer's other work, their influences, the historical period, and
other context.

~~~
AstralStorm
This means it is worthless for a multiple choice test and should be a write-up
with argumentation. A miniature dissertation.

Like, say, maturity exam is here in Poland. They're a pain to grade, have to
be very careful guidelines and alert examiners.

~~~
dannyw
I’m sorry, in what world is literature or English multiple choice?!

In Australia / NSW it’s essays and essays, including a creative writing prompt
that I’ve always genuinely found fun. Think /r/writingprompts.

Never really engaged with the rest of English but it requires choosing your
own texts (no list) to compare and dissect. Still flawed? Yeah, but I feel
like ‘they tried’.

~~~
afarrell
> in what world is literature or English multiple choice?!

If you click on the article, the first thing your eye is drawn to is an image
of a multiple-choice scantron bubble-sheet. Its reasonable to think that this
image is relevant to the discussion the article presents and to implicitly
conclude that the article is describing a multiple-choice test.

------
azeotropic
I was reminded of this passage from Plato's Apology of Socrates:

"I went to the poets; tragic, dithyrambic, and all sorts. And there, I said to
myself, you will be detected; now you will find out that you are more ignorant
than they are. Accordingly, I took them some of the most elaborate passages in
their own writings, and asked what was the meaning of them - thinking that
they would teach me something. Will you believe me? I am almost ashamed to
speak of this, but still I must say that there is hardly a person present who
would not have talked better about their poetry than they did themselves. That
showed me in an instant that not by wisdom do poets write poetry, but by a
sort of genius and inspiration; they are like diviners or soothsayers who also
say many fine things, but do not understand the meaning of them. And the poets
appeared to me to be much in the same case; and I further observed that upon
the strength of their poetry they believed themselves to be the wisest of men
in other things in which they were not wise."

So my expectation is that seventh graders would outperform the poet on this
exam.

------
kybernetikos
It is well accepted within the arts that the authors interpretation should not
be considered privileged over the readers. I was taught that interpretations
can vary in quality - particularly if they fail to take account of salient
features in the work, but there's no particular reason that an artist who may
have just created what 'felt right' necessarily understood why it felt so
right.

I like to quote Socrates on questions like this:

After I had finished with the politicians I turned to the poets, dramatic,
lyric, and all the rest, in the belief that here I should expose myself as a
comparative ignorammus. I used to pick up what I thought were some of their
most perfect works and question them closely about the meaning of what they
had written, in the hope of incidentally enlarging my own knowledge. Well,
gentlemen, I hesitate to tell you the truth, but it must be told. It is hardly
an exaggeration to say that any of the bystanders could have explained those
poems better than their actual authors. So I soon made up my mind about the
poets too: I decided that it was not wisdom that enabled them to write their
poetry, but a kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and
prophets who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least
what they mean. It seemed clear to me that the poets were in very much the
same case; and I also observed that the very fact that they were poets made
them think that they had a perfect understanding of all other subjects, of
which they were totally ignorant.

— Socrates, quoted by Plato in The Apology of Socrates (translated by Hugh
Tredinnick)

------
netcan
Funny...

As I write this, the office I work with is abuzz with game of thrones talk.
Does Arya fullfil the prophecy. How winter fell to the Starks. If it gets to
pints after work it'll be the war of roses, white walkers as a symbol of
climate change, dragons as nuclear weapons...

We delve into art we like, insert meaning and extend the stories with our
interpretations. Sometimes we hope, imagine or expect that the artist intended
it this way. Sometimes we don't. We know this is our own embellishment.

I don't think the stuff the writer is describing is a problem really. It's
fine that people understand poems in ways that are unrecognisable to the poet.
I think the medium of standardized testing is just awkward applied to
metaphorical babble about (possibly) metaphorical art.

You can standardize-test arithmetic, because they's an objective answer.

Poetry & literature classes are about making students engage with stuff. Most
teachers won't care if the kids read their own crazy theories into a poem or
whatnot.

But... imagine forcing someone who isn't into game of thrones into
articulating a metaphorical theory about it. Awkward.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Now imagine your boss would grade you on how well you can recite a particular
co-worker's GoT interpretation, and cut your paycheck if you get too many
things wrong - or if you dared to say you disagree with that interpretation.

This is how humanities in school feel. Being told some arbitrary
interpretation is _the_ truth, being forced to learn it, and being tested on
it.

~~~
mcguire
And yet, when I point out that I find _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_ to be a
story about a god-like entity that appears, saves the libertarians from their
inability to play well with others, and then disappears before we get to ask
any questions about its existence, or _The Puppet Masters_ to be tedious
(yeah, I get it, commies bad) and to demonstrate that Heinlein wasn't very
good at seeing the consequences of his ideas,...I get a lot of crankiness from
the same "humanities are about punishing disagreement" people.

------
xtracerx
Maybe I was a jaded student, but I always thought of these questions as a game
of answering what I know they want me to answer. These types of questions are
obviously dumb, and they shouldn't be included in multiple-choice tests.

~~~
ACow_Adonis
perhaps I'm even more jaded, but I assumed that was the point of all
assessment material and procedures.

of course, this didn't really help me when I was younger, because its taken me
almost 30 years to realise practically no one really cared whether assessment
was valid or not, just about marks.

------
sytelus
I think few people probably knows how textbooks are written. Given millions of
students spend millions of hours on these textbooks, one would expect there is
a great care taken in writing textbooks. This is often not true and it was
very well described by Richard Feynman. He was so repulsed by the quality of
textbooks that this Nobel prize winning physicist decided to be part of
committee. To his surprise, in committee meetings no one came prepared, they
often missed meetings and decisions were finally made ad-hoc. He was so
frustrated by whole process that (I think) eventually gave up. I suspect
similar thing happens in how exams are written. People who write questions
aren't often deep thinkers who took at most care but rather low level leaf
nodes who happen to have time for doing more work for peanuts.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
In the UK exams are privatised, you buy the exams from an exam board. They
often have massive errors in them and clearly haven't been properly tested - I
used to do mark checking.

500,000+ kids take the papers at £30+ a time. You'd think for £15M you could
afford to do things properly; but of course the key metrics are
profit/bonus/wages.

Moreover the boards compete in part on making their tests easier, or at least
that they give the highest grades. You can't objectively compare students in
such a system, it's moronic.

------
nxrabl
(2017), and original source is located at
[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-
bad...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-bad-i-cant-
answer-these_b_586d5517e4b0c3539e80c341)

~~~
akubera
and a nice discussion at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13348672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13348672)

------
cascom
1\. I think it’s generally sort of amusing to see a bunch of STEM oriented
people (who generally are less than sympathetic to people who are math or
computer illiterate) take the position that the art subjects they probably
struggled with are BS

2\. I actually think many creators/authors of art are sometimes least well
positioned to describe its cultural implications/significance

3\. As everyone here knows standardized tests are less about the
perfect/correct answer, but rather the least bad vs the other choices

~~~
Zutano
> I actually think many creators/authors of art are sometimes least well
> positioned to describe its cultural implications/significance

Then who is in the best position to describe the art? The test authors?

A better way to judge the students' understanding of literary concepts present
in a poem would be to have them describe it however they want, and grade them
on how well they can cite evidence for their claims about the author's
intention.

------
DoreenMichele
Standardized tests are designed to serve the needs of the school. Such tests
let the teacher and school system assess multiple students efficiently and --
theoretically -- "fairly." They aren't actually designed to serve the needs of
students.

~~~
HarryHirsch
If the students only knew what their needs were. My students _need_ "word
problems". Their schooling didn't teach them how to deal with ambiguity or how
to make a reasoned argument. Also, in real life you won't encounter the right
answer plus four decoy answers.

But they _want_ check-a-box tests. They even went to complain to
administration because they weren't getting any. Apparently, I'm asking
erroneous [sic!] questions in class. You despair, you do.

~~~
SimbaOnSteroids
>Also, in real life you won't encounter the right answer plus four decoy
answers.

On the contrary, if you've ever looked for programming help on stack overflow
you'll be quite familiar with the real life experience of being presented with
a right answer and 4 or more decoys.

~~~
xxs
That's a simplistic way to put it (or just have a jab at stackoverflow).

Overall, if your question has an answer there, it's not a hard one...

------
kasey_junk
I have mixed feelings about this article. On the one hand I’m completely here
for the argument that standardized tests aren’t a good way to evaluate poetry
(or other sorts of literature).

But in the current environment that frequently reduces to an argument that
because it’s not obviously quantifiable we shouldn’t do it. That I disagree
with. Most problems don’t have objectively quantifiable metrics naturally so
being comfortable in frameworks that allow for that ambiguity is important.

~~~
mannykannot
"...so being comfortable in frameworks that allow for that ambiguity is
important."

Indeed, but a multiple-choice standardized test question is the antithesis of
such an environment.

------
zelos
Isn’t the basic problem the use of multiple choice? Being able to write a few
hundred words arguing an opinion about a poem (right or wrong) has some value.
Picking an arbitrarily chosen ‘right’ answer from a list has almost none. I
don’t think I’ve ever had a multiple choice exam in English Lit - actually, I
don’t remember multiple choice in any serious exam.

~~~
ultrarunner
Well, yes, but actually no. I grew up with both parents teaching in public
schools in subjects that cannot be tested in a multiple choice format. They
both sat down every night in front of the tv and shuffled papers from inbox to
outbox, quickly scribbling a score on each. Very very little thought seemed to
go into the content of the work, and I always wondered if they were scanning
the names in the top right corner to make their judgment. I never did ask,
though. Either way, I’m not sure much could change; even without giving these
kids a fair shake, it still took hours to grade these. It’s a broken system
and the only palatable response seems to be to throw more money at it and hope
for different results.

~~~
mieseratte
> and I always wondered if they were scanning the names in the top right
> corner to make their judgment.

This is most certainly a thing. Even funnier, I had a few A's on assignments I
never even turned in.

------
EFruit
>Texas' STAAR tests are administered in part by Pearson Assessments, a testing
company that Holbrook called a "sadistic behemoth."

I have never heard a single good thing about Pearson. Having been assessed by
them in Public schools, I think the consensus is well-earned.

~~~
smudgymcscmudge
My neighbor says they pay pretty well. So there’s that. At least if you’re at
the VP level.

~~~
pts_
Off tangent but once I worked for a Pearson software contractor and they
talked of their client with their nose turned up, as if they were the king's
favourite in the middle ages. Cringe.

------
RcouF1uZ4gsC
>"My final reflection is this: any test that questions the motivations of the
author without asking the author is a big baloney sandwich," she wrote.
"Mostly test makers do this to dead people who can’t protest. But I’m not
dead. I protest."

I guess that the result of this will be the test makers using long dead
authors more.

------
chuckgreenman
I grew up in Florida, a state addicted to standardized testing, and after a
while you start to notice something. Standardized tests are like a meta game.
I'm sure they provide a basic bench mark to see if you're literate or can do
basic math but beyond that it's just pattern recognition. After a certain
point you stop reading the passages, just skimming, because it's always the
same types of questions and you can sort of intuit which beats of the story
you need to look at to get the answer. The math sections are the same kind of
thing. Match the question up to the right memorized algorithm and run it.

The tests measure your willingness and ability to become good at something
with no short-term, obvious benefit, which is a clever system. However, not
every high school student has 200 hours to spend getting good at bullshit.

------
ben509
This feels like the literary version of the "what in tarnation would you ever
need this new-fangled multiplication for" critiques of common core math.

> Holbrook wrote that asking students to guess an author's intent in writing a
> piece of literature is doomed to be a pointless exercise.

It's pedagogy! Students aren't trying to divine the One True Meaning of the
piece. They're trying to learn how to read a piece of literature, identify
literary techniques, and think critically about it. If a student can produce a
justifiable answer, they're winning.

I agree that dissecting literature is not fun, and I agree this is probably
not the optimal way to teach it. But these are precursors to learning how to
read and analyze critically, and we need more of that in society.

~~~
fungiblecog
But they're not being asked to produce a justifiable answer. This is multiple
choice with only 1 'correct' answer.

The only way to really test comprehension is through essay questions but then
the complaints on subjectivity are raised and we're back at standardised
multiple choice

~~~
Symbiote
Britain manages to set questions for the exams taken at ages 16, (17) and 18
with essay-type questions, for most questions of all subjects.

There's a complete paper for GCSE (at 16) English here. Choose the June 2017
one, as the November one has the source material omitted due to copyright.

[https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/english/gcse/english-
languag...](https://www.aqa.org.uk/subjects/english/gcse/english-
language-8700/assessment-resources)

You can skip to the last few pages of the mark scheme to get the idea of how
the long-form answers are marked. "Varied and inventive use of structural
features, Writing is compelling, incorporating a range of convincing and
complex ideas, Fluently linked paragraphs with seamlessly integrated discourse
markers"

~~~
anticensor
> omitted due to copyright

It is actually omitted due to testcenter policy, to enable reuse. You cannot
reuse an exam with its answer key published.

~~~
stordoff
Are you sure about that? "Paper 1: Insert (Modified A4 18pt) November 2017"
quite clearly states: "The source cannot be reproduced here due to third party
copyright restrictions."

------
ezoe
That reminds me of a story of a student who got a homework "Explain the
writer's intention". The writing was her father's work. So naturally, she
asked her dad for the answer which he replied, "I was thinking at the time of
this writing was that I want to finish this goddamn writing ASAP".

She present the answer next day and teacher gave her a bad grade.

~~~
Dylan16807
That's cute but one single thought he had is not even close to a description
of overall intent.

------
evandijk70
Out of curiosity, I took the test for the first poem and got all questions
correct. I've always been relatively good at standardised tests, and agree
they don't always measure something meaningful.

The author is being a little harsh, testing reading skills is difficult, and
she does not provide a better alternative to evaluate students reading
ability. Moreover, based on her comments, I'm pretty sure that if she were to
take the text, she would score a 100%.

The questions and answers:

[https://tea.texas.gov/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id...](https://tea.texas.gov/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=25769814950&libID=25769814997)

[https://tea.texas.gov/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id...](https://tea.texas.gov/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=25769814918&libID=25769814965)

~~~
goodcanadian
Well, I could probably figure out all of the "best" answers, but at the same
time, I felt only the first question had a choice that was even remotely
correct. As you say, it is more of a test of test taking skills than of
reading comprehension.

------
hprotagonist
Better than some other cases
([http://archive.is/TEp6g](http://archive.is/TEp6g)) , in which not only is a
dadaist bit of a very wild book (which i really like and recommend) used as a
test question, _the ending was changed_ so it really really makes no sense!

~~~
duskwuff
There is something deeply ironic about a standardized test asking students to
analyze a Pinkwater story. It's the sort of thing he would have written a
story about, really. :)

~~~
hprotagonist
he probably has, somewhere.

I can't recommend Borgel enough, either; it's really good.

------
cmroanirgo
> _" My final reflection is this: any test that questions the motivations of
> the author without asking the author is a big baloney sandwich," she wrote.
> "Mostly test makers do this to dead people who can’t protest. But I’m not
> dead. I protest."_

------
ineedasername
I'm going through a bit of this sort of thing with my oldest child right now.
Sometimes there are issues with the common core _specifications_ themselves,
but holy heck are there problems with their implementation. For example,
common core math standards MP2 & MP3 relate to reasoning and logical
arguments.

Typically these areas are targeted to 5th graders to start with. My son is in
3rd grade, yet out of the blue with no prior introduction, questions arise in
a module on _fractions_ about this. Suddenly my son is given a question like
this:

 _" Jane has 6 apples but 4 of them are rotten. Jane's friend Bob says that
less than half of the apples can be eaten._ DERIVE A CONJECTURE _about this
situation and provide evidence to support your argument. "_

This is absolutely ridiculous. First, the concept of a _conjecture_ has never
previously been introduced. Second, even if it had been, as used here it is
completely inappropriate. It has been pulled from the MP3 standard but clearly
used by someone creating questions that had no idea of how to actually apply
the concept or perhaps know themselves what a proper mathematical conjecture
_actually is_ , much less that its use here is basically a complete non-
sequitur. The word probably should not appear in an elementary school core
specification at all, as every instance I can find of it is used
inappropriately as the generic layman's version of the word rather than its
mathematical use, when _math is the frickin ' subject at hand_ /end rant

------
jimmaswell
I felt like those questions mostly weren't that bad and had a clear "best"
answer.

------
philliphaydon
I absolutely agree

I dropped out of school because of this. Because I failed writing an essay on
world war 1 poetry.

It’s not right to dissect art and fail a student for “wrong” answers.

~~~
goto11
It is absolutely possible to misunderstand poetry. (Not saying you did that)

~~~
yifanl
Even if you misunderstand the intent of the author, you can give a well-
reasoned interpretation.

From what I remember of the standardized tests, they were either more
interested in marking the structure of the content than the content itself, or
looking for keywords and marking off a checklist.

To the snarky cynic in me, this might be good training for resume-writing, but
not really how you want to teach your high school students to be good at
creative interpretation.

------
learnstats2
I work as a tutor and have tutored similar questions - sometimes I encourage
students to think about 'how is the test-writer trying to test you?'

And, perhaps, that is what standardized tests are intended to test: can you
anticipate and meet the arbitrary requirements of someone with power over you
in a particular situation? If yes, you are very employable.

------
BrandoElFollito
Woah, my son is in the equivalent of 7th grade in France (5ème) and he would
have never answered the questions correctly (not would I).

We have our share of twisted poetry, but it usually is about some soldier
dying on the battlefield of WWI, or about a herring nailed on the wall (those
who we at school in the 80's will recognize it ( _...sec, sec, sec..._ ).

The answers are pretty much straightforward, at the level of a regional beauty
contest when they are asked a personal question and they answer that they
dream of a better world without starving children (or that the US should
provide maps to the world, according to Miss South Carolina).

I would hate to have my future hanging on the interpretation of someone's trip
when high. Especially when 13 years old.

------
andrepd
>"Forget joy of language and the fun of discovery in poetry, this is line-by-
line dissection, painful and delivered without anesthetic."

Describes my experience with $first_language classes in school to a tee. I
love reading and learning and discussing stuff. I loathed those hours where we
were told to cram the (god-given) standardised interpretation of the problem,
no matter how little sense it made to you or how you might have an alternative
opinion or assessment. Stifling all creativity and capacity for independent
thought, not to mention killing the joy of reading in millions of kids.

------
nothis
I was skeptical because the headline just sounds _too_ good. But yep, this is
as stupid and cynical as it sounds. An a-b-c questionnaire about the meaning
of a poem. Wow. Something went WRONG here.

------
lumberingjack
This happened in real time in my high school we were one of the first classes
to use the two-way classroom cameras and we interviewed a writer. Our English
teacher was sure that the writer had made items in a scene that was depicted
in the book red because the "red makes you feel a certain way"I straight-up
ask the writer why he made the curtains in that scene red and they responded
with "well they had to be a color why not red!"

------
saagarjha
I'm really disappointed that the author didn't post the answers. Putting my
SAT Reading hat on, my guess would be G/B, possibly C?/G/B/F.

------
nwah1
Consistently, I was most frustrated by the demands in my English and Creative
Writing courses that there were correct answers to what certain things within
stories were meant to symbolize.

And creative writing in general is something that doesn't work well for people
who think in more literal ways. It seems like a way for those who don't to
torture those who do. I wonder how much sadism is truly involved in the
grading process. My guess is... a lot.

------
sli
When I was looking for one of the poems mentioned, I found what appears to be
a sample test[0] (or perhaps one of the past tests the author mentions) with
the poem and questions about it. I figured some of you folks might like to
take a look.

[0]:
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/scschoolfiles/200/a_real_case_1.pdf](https://s3.amazonaws.com/scschoolfiles/200/a_real_case_1.pdf)

------
derrick_jensen
In my senior year English course, there was an extra credit assignment that
involved analyzing Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I decided to
just email the author and ask about the book, hoping he would give some
unorthodox answers that I could say we're the authors true intent. He ended up
sending me some wacky email with Futurama references, and he died about a
month after that before I finished the paper

------
sgslo
Relevant preface from 'The Adventures of Huck Finn':

"Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;
persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting
to find a plot in it will be shot. BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR per G.G., CHIEF OF
ORDNANCE" \- Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huck Finn

------
mikorym
I don't know if this holds in national exams or in many countries, but my
teacher used to follow logical argument and would score that.

I do remember a few cases where there were outright red question marks when
essentially I was trying to make elaborate con arguments.

Fortunately, we had no multiple choice questions for any of our three English
tests.

------
microcolonel
> _Dose of reality: test makers are for-profit organizations._

And public schools are _really really bad at buying things_.

------
brobdingnagians
>>> My poems are a whole lot cheaper than Mary Oliver’s or Jane Kenyon’s, so
there’s that.

Byron, Wordsworth, Tennyson, Oliver Goldsmith they are all free to license,
could we really not use any of the thousands of poems by them and hundreds of
other poets? Sure use some modern ones, but use some of the classics too.

------
eej71
I always enjoyed this story from Michael Crichton.
[http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/george-orwell-got-a-b-
at-...](http://www.openculture.com/2014/01/george-orwell-got-a-b-at-
harvard.html)

------
stcredzero
Herman Melville was said to have been amazed at the symbolism attributed to
him in Moby Dick.

~~~
pocpoczoc
This massive diatribe is symbolic of Melville's inability to stick to the
fucking point.

~~~
stcredzero
Don't worry, your diatribe isn't that massive. Actually, I thought Melville's
point was to digress. Wasn't the point to digress into all these side details
out of the joy of describing the whaling world? (So I have read in
commentaries.)

------
bayareanative
Hehe. I believe it.

So I took the SAT-I (out of 1600) with zero prep around 1994.

Math - missed one question (dumb mistake)

English - ~560/800

I was too depressed and anxious (undiagnosed, untreated) at the time to be
able to concentrate on the critical thinking and passage questions.

------
IshKebab
> . . And I meander to its rhythm, > flopping like a fish. > Why can’t I get
> to sleep? > Advertisement

Well said HuffPo. Are there rules on HN about linking to articles that are
impossible to read because of adverts?

------
atian
You are being measured to derive an acceptable answer based on the framework
which you are taught against. Work is usually not taken as it was meant to be
perceived. The presumption is naive.

These are not actionable findings.

------
childintime
Probably the same discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13348672](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13348672)

------
Grustaf
“I’m a native speaker of Greek but I failed this grammar test”

------
ggggtez
When I was in highschool, this thought certainly occurred to me. On the other
hand, the possibility exists that an author's intention is actually
irrelevant.

------
foxfired
I was always afraid to read any classical work because no matter what you
think you read, someone will tell you "Actually..."

Then one day I read this beautiful quote about the old man and the sea:

> “Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolism. The sea is the
> sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The
> shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people
> say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond when you know.”

― Ernest Hemingway

~~~
mykowebhn
On the one hand I feel Hemingway was being sincere when he said/wrote this
quote. On the other hand, part of me feels he was saying this just to be
provocative.

Also, I'm not sure anyone has ever told me "Actually..." when I've explained
what I thought I read. If this was a teacher/professor of yours he/she did you
a huge disservice.

I can think of two reasons (I'm sure there are more) for why artists say what
they want to say indirectly.

1) Things tend to stick in our brains the more we have to work to gain that
knowledge. If someone imparts knowledge to you and you take it in passively
this knowledge tends not to stick around in our brains as well as if you had
to struggle to acquire this knowledge.

2) Many times in our history what an artist said or wrote could get that
artist killed. As a result, they tended to mask the true meaning of their
message using allegory and/or metaphor.

~~~
komali2
From what I know of Hemingway, it's sincere.

The image he gives of himself (or imagines of himself) is a barrel chested
beer swigging straight shooting Man's Man. He bullied "pencil necked" little
Fitzgerald into alcoholism, and possibly abandoning his wife. He used a
writing style that was the quintessential "no fluff" style of the period.

I don't know him but from what I know of him he would not be a fan of having
untanned literary professors claiming his works were about more than literally
just an old man pissing in the sea or a bull fighter fighting bulls.

~~~
Angostura
> from what I know of him he would not be a fan of having untanned literary
> professors claiming his works were about more than literally just an old man
> pissing in the sea or a bull fighter fighting bulls.

... I think that's the point - even if it _were_ more than that, he might not
be a fan of admitting it.

------
ordinaryperson
> Dose of reality: test makers are for-profit organizations

The College Board, the maker of the SAT and Advanced Placement (AP) exams, is
a not-for-profit organization. While the test in question the author refers to
is the Texas state assessment tests (STAAR), it is factually incorrect to say
test makers are for-profit organizations.

~~~
elliekelly
The author never said anything about the SAT or AP exams. She was referring to
the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) where her poems
appear. STAAR is developed by Pearson, a publicly-traded for-profit publishing
corporation.

~~~
ordinaryperson
Yes, and she generalizes about all testing organizations. To repeat hear exact
line in full context:

> Dose of reality: test makers are for-profit organizations. My poems are a
> whole lot cheaper than Mary Oliver’s or Jane Kenyon’s, so there’s that.

She does not say, "Texas state test makers..." \-- she just says "test
makers." She singles out STAAR in the rest of the article but that graph
explicitly says "test makers."

------
nydel
is this testing method: a) dumb b) silly c) aromatically identical to balls d)
two of the above

------
megy
I mean, so? She writes poems. Why should that mean she is good at analyzing
poems? Are game players good at writing games, and vice-versa? Are people who
eat a lot good at cooking? Are runners great at designing shoes?

~~~
edflsafoiewq
I agree that the author doesn't get to dictate the reading of a poem (nor does
the test-maker), but these questions are usually formulated to explicitly
reference the intentions of the author (the "author's purpose"). Although, now
that I look at a few, it looks like the common language is "The author most
likely did so-and-so in order to...".

But more honest language ("What does this line mean?") would erase the veneer
of objectivity; hermeneutical questions do not have "right" answers you can
pick from a list of multiple choices.

~~~
joesb
> But more honest language ("What does this line mean?") would erase the
> veneer of objectivity; hermeneutical questions do not have "right" answers

"When you say it honestly, it looks bad. So don't say it that way".

Not targeting at you, obviously you are explaining the thought process of the
exam maker, but that kinda shows the issue with them.

They looked at the question and realize that there's no right answer for these
kind of question to be made in to a multiple choice question. But instead of
changing the test to something else, or making it a free text answer, they
choose to play with wording of the question to hide the problem with it.

