
Poet: I can’t answer questions on Texas standardized tests about my own poems - danso
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/01/07/poet-i-cant-answer-questions-on-texas-standardized-tests-about-my-own-poems/
======
cderwin
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 think that two equally skilled
readers would arrive at different conclusions? Which is to say: Is the answer
really objective?

In any case, the state of standardized testing is miserable, and unfortunately
from all accounts I have heard it is worse abroad. I don't think this should
be much of a surprise to anyone.

~~~
mhurron
> 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 work and the viewers background. What we teach is that
works have one correct interpretation and if you do not read it that way, you
are wrong.

~~~
jasode
_> 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). After the
class ended, he went up and introduced himself to the teacher, saying that he
had found the teacher 's interpretation of the story interesting, though it
really wasn't what he had meant at all. The teacher's response: "Just because
you wrote it, what makes you think you have the slightest idea what it's
about?"_

~~~
Pitarou
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.

~~~
justifier
professors teach to their opinion

i took a shakespeare course at university where we were asked to read troilus
and cressida and compare it to its source troilus and criseyde by chaucer

i wrote that i disliked the piece because it just read like someone who
recently got burned in love venting irrationally, noting that i liked
shakespeare's version more because he gives the last word to pandarus(o) who
uses it to comically complain about his health and i felt this beautifully
subverted the assumed tragedy the characters felt subject to in their
stories.. woe is me!

i failed the exam

frustrated i went looking for evidence to defend my claim(i).. though contrary
to the linked comic i did find some interesting notes

first off chaucer was a source for shakespeare, but hardly the source of the
work

chaucer's main source was boccaccio's il filastrato.. which was based off an
earlier version known as le roman de troie by benoît de sainte-maure

but the interesting bit comes from boccaccio's version(ii) because the story
itself is only 8 cantos long, even the wikipedia page says the work itself is
only 8 cantos long!(iii), but there is an additional canto, a ninth canto,
wherein the author, boccaccio, addresses the reader and apologises for writing
the poem and states he's unsure where it came from but asserts that he was
recently dumped

(o)
[http://shakespeare.mit.edu/troilus_cressida/full.html](http://shakespeare.mit.edu/troilus_cressida/full.html)

(i) [https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/01/06](https://www.penny-
arcade.com/comic/2012/01/06)

(i/2) [https://store.penny-arcade.com/products/agree-with-me-
tee](https://store.penny-arcade.com/products/agree-with-me-tee)

(ii)
[http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/filostrato_griffin.pdf](http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/filostrato_griffin.pdf)

(iii)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Filostrato](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Il_Filostrato)

front page of reddit right now..
[https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/5mr6ws/shakespeare_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/funny/comments/5mr6ws/shakespeare_in_school/)
;P

~~~
jjoonathan
Why did you omit capital letters and periods and misuse ellipses in a post
which attacks academic English? These choices would be annoying enough in any
post but for this one in particular they undermine your credibility.

~~~
thaumaturgy
You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because
you saw them not use their turn signal.

Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a
comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history.

I'm demonstrating one natural outcome of your criticism here by using proper
punctuation, capitalization, and other grammatical minutiae while knowing not
the damnedest thing about the quality or literary history of _Troilus and
Cressida_.

~~~
jjoonathan
> You've just called into question a race car driver's driving ability because
> you saw them not use their turn signal.

Note that I used the word "choice," indicating that I understood it to be a
conscious decision rather than a lack of competence.

> Capitalization and punctuation shouldn't be your signals for quality in a
> comment on Chaucer and Shakespeare and literary history.

What makes you think I used them as exclusive signals? My claim wasn't that
bad grammar made the parent post bad, it was that bad grammar had a negative
contribution towards the overall credibility of the post.

> I'm demonstrating one natural outcome of your criticism...

Your reading comprehension might leave something to be desired, but the fact
that a weak building may be built on a strong foundation does not imply that a
strong building may have a weak foundation. To be clear: I am referring to
your "example," not justifier's post, because I do not believe that
_justifier_ has a weak foundation, at least not with respect to grammar, which
brings us back to the question of _why_.

Purposefully employing bad grammar in a post about English is a signal both
that the writer holds strong and nontraditional opinions about English _and_
that (s)he lacks the persuasive tact to fight one battle at a time. The way I
see it, either quality alone could have led to a justified failing grade on an
essay for reasons that have nothing to do with the veracity of its core claim.

~~~
thaumaturgy
Alright, I wrote my reply to you in good humor, but you've clearly taken it
personally, so I'll write more plainly.

You're essentially bikeshedding [1] here. 'justifier' wrote an interesting
comment that had some actual substance to it, and now you and I are engaged
here in a pissing match over the value of its grammar and punctuation, and
we're doing that because neither of us is well-enough educated on the actual
topic of 'justifier's comment to respond substantively to it but yet we both
want to express an opinion about it.

It's an ugly, ugly habit that I see _a lot_ in HN comments, whether it's in
reply to a long-form essay or in reply to a newly announced startup or a new
programming language. It discourages comments and participation from more
thoughtful people because they can expect whatever they write to get henpecked
by other people who, having no mastery of the actual subject matter, turn
instead to the most trivial-to-understand bits and pieces.

I picked on you at random to try to discourage that behavior a little. And
since I'm contributing to that problem now myself, this'll be my last word
about it today.

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality)

------
literallycancer
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 clearly the question says
"mainly", indicating you are supposed to choose the "F using similes and
metaphors to describe them" since there's much more of those.

About 35 - "The imagery in lines 16 through 19 helps the reader understand –"
she says that

 _" And of course there’s an argument to be made for A, I did shift into this
mood TODAY."_

But the question is about lines 16-19, which don't mention any attitude
changes, so A clearly can't be the right answer.

Etc., etc.

I'm sorry, but being the author doesn't and shouldn't guarantee a perfect
score.

~~~
calebsurfs
The problem isn't that the author doesn't know the answers, it's that _the
test is looking for 1 correct answer_. The point of reading and analyzing
poetry is in the process and being able to explain your reasoning coherently.

~~~
mos_basik
I uh, apologize in advance for the wall of text. It started out shorter.

# TL;DR

\- I don't think the questions are unreasonable \- I'm not surprised the poet
says she can't answer them \- I agree with you that the point of analysis is
the process, but that gets tested in _writing_ assessments \- _reading_
assessments get bad rap because people forget reading/understanding the
questions is just as important as reading/understanding the texts

# BODY

Before reading the whole article (so before reading her analysis of the
questions near the end), I followed the source links from the first section to
try answering the 5 questions about "A Real Case" myself.

I got them all correct and (discounting the initial time taken to read the
poem) spent more time scrolling up and down in the pdf to refer back to the
text than I did thinking about the questions.

This is a reading assessment for 7th graders. Perhaps all the commotion in the
article and in the news and in this thread is because people are assuming that
it is assessing 7th graders' abilities to read and understand poetry. I don't
think this is true at all. I think it's assessing 7th graders' abilities to
read and understand questions.

The question of whether the ability to read and understand poetry is of
lasting value may be up in the air, but the ability to read and understand
questions is an essential communication skill in modern life, imo. The
material the questions are _about_ is - not quite incidental, but honestly no
more than half of the picture.

The single question that I spent more time on than all the others combined was
35. Maybe my approach to answering a question that I considered poorly worded
(at first) might be of interest.

Here it is, with the stanza it concerns included and the highlighted lines
marked:

    
    
      --> My mood’s as welcome as
      --> incoming dog breath,
      --> or a terminal case of split ends.
      --> I sparkle like a dust rag,
          I could attract mosquitoes -
          maybe - not friends.
        
      35) The imagery in these lines helps the reader understand-
    
          A) the shift in the speaker’s attitude
          B) the speaker’s unpleasantness
          C) why the speaker has no friends
          D) what the speaker thinks of others
    

And the issue there was that one of the two possible answers, B, implies the
other, C. If the speaker is unpleasant, that is a perfectly good reason for
the speaker to have no friends.

I eventually decided on B for two reasons:

1) Friends are only ever mentioned _after_ the highlighted lines. To put it in
programming terms (sorry!) a first-time reader streaming the poem (i.e., the
way most people read) would lack a mental "parser" labelled "now the
speakers's talking about friends" with which to process the highlighted lines.
My experience is that most straightforward writers (the ones we can reasonably
expect 7th graders to parse) do not expect their readers to manage their own
mental "heap" of unexplained information and compare all of its contents to
each new bit of information received as reading proceeds. When unexplained
information _does_ come along ("Where did my bike go? I parked it right
here!") it's usually clearly labelled as such, so the reader need only
maintain the heap of "information the author labelled for me as unknown". This
is both less work for the reader than figuring out the labels on their own,
and requires them to remember less. When this sort of labeling is not done,
it's called a mystery novel.

[Aside: of course, writers who are not targeting 7th graders can and do write
however they want; a favorite example of mine is Neal Stephenson, who seems to
take perverse pleasure in quietly building up a narrative out of elements that
he introduces so familiarly and with so little fanfare or detail that you
swear he must have explained this thing a few pages back and you just missed
it somehow, but after checking the previous 50 pages you can't find any
mention of it so you eventually give up and continue and 150 pages later you
read a paragraph that tumbles around in your head for a few seconds and then
it clicks snugly into place in your heap and completely illuminates the
question you had earlier. And I love him for it.]

2) Most of the rest of the poem is composed of atomic ideas expressed in one
or two lines (with the exception of the first stanza that keeps the "sickness"
ball bouncing for 5 lines). To match the rest of the poem, it seemed more
likely the highlighted stanza expressed four nearly-independent thoughts: I
smell bad, I'm irritating, I'm boring, and I'm unattractive. In that
structure, the concept of friends is restricted to the "scope" of the final
thought, and _only_ used to illustrate just how unattractive the speaker is.
None of the other thoughts are involved. As such, C is unrelated to the
highlighted lines but B is still a good match.

Of course, most of this was unconscious when I was doing it. I wrote down B
with about 70% confidence and kept going, because that's what you do on a
timed test. Now that I put my reasoning it all down on paper, I'm much more
confident in the result. (It helps that it turned out to be correct!)

If I recall correctly, I got a perfect score on the reading section of the
SAT. I helped several of the international students at my school study for
that section specifically, and my top recommendation was that they read books.
I imagine that I'm to the left of the bell curve of reading
speed/comprehension; I had read Ivanhoe by age seven or eight and the Lord of
the Rings by age nine. (the hard part was getting started; after my mother had
read the first two or three chapters to me, I got hooked and read the rest
myself.)

Still, I have no aspirations as a poet or author. Likewise, I'm sure there are
many superb poets who are quite terrible at analytical thinking. If poet was
truly unable to answer the test questions confidently, I'm not surprised. On
the other hand, if the poet could actually answer the questions just fine but
was being hyperbolical to frame a strong point about how test writers are
ignoring author intent and the result is bad test questions, that would not
surprise me either. (After all, it makes sense that an author would take the
conservative position in the "death of the author" discussion!)

You [my parent commenter, if you're still here!] stressed that the the problem
with the test is that it has 1 correct answer for each question, and so cannot
accurately test the test-taker's ability to perform a process for which the
point is _not_ the result, but the ability to justify the validity one's
process.

I agree with you!

But testing someone's ability to justify their analysis is called a _writing_
assessment. What we are dealing with is a _reading_ assessment.

This assessment measures the test-taker's ability to internalize the analysis
process performed by the test-writer, apply that process to the text
themselves, and demonstrate that they were successful by accurately predicting
which conclusion the test-writer arrived at.

In other words, this is testing the test-taker's ability to accurately and
productively process thoughts that originated outside of themselves. This is
something that 7th graders are not very good at without practice. (This is one
contributor, I think, to why bullying is common at those ages - kids have not
yet learned to empathize.) This is a good skill to learn, and a good skill to
test.

~~~
basch
to somewhat illustrate your point regarding parsing.

I didnt read the article. I read question 35. I read the four lines you
highlighted. I read the four potential answers. I reread the four lines, and
then reread the answers. I chose B near immediately. Only after I read lines 5
and 6 did I realize C was even relevant. Even after reading C, I came to the
conclusion you eloquently illustrated.

>In that structure, the concept of friends is restricted to the "scope" of the
final thought, and only used to illustrate just how unattractive the speaker
is.

I also agree with your general thesis. The poem is irrelevant, the test is
testing your ability to parse instructions, not just poems.

------
dsr_
Predicted, mostly, by Isaac Asimov in 1954:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Immortal_Bard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Immortal_Bard)

(TL;DR with spoiler: Time machine brings Shakespeare back to the current age,
where he takes a class on his own work and is flunked.)

~~~
6stringmerc
I've been only a tangential reader of Asimov, though definitely respectful of
his contributions to the literary canon. This sounds fantastic to check out,
thank you & also for the summary preview.

------
forgotpwtomain
> 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 that we didn't read a single English 'classic' in school
until grade 7 or 8 (everything else was scholastic co. for teens / young adult
junk..)

I don't have a particular side to take on the standardized testing debate, but
it's probably worth mentioning that countries with extremely successful public
education systems (China, USSR) used a great deal of it -- so at the least
that's probably _not_ the problem with the US public education system.

~~~
762236
> How do these terrible poets even make it on to the curriculum /
> standardized-tests?

Snobbish much?

~~~
mirkules
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.

~~~
6stringmerc
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 hard, never have, but that's the essence of
education and brain growth - challenges.

~~~
762236
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.

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

------
oddlyaromatic
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 could have been much worse!

~~~
ansible
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 interest.

I'm not saying that schools shouldn't teach poetry, but it shouldn't be on a
standardized test either. What's the point? You want to expose kids to
culture, but it may not stick, and that's OK.

~~~
analog31
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.

~~~
ghaff
"There will always be a conflict between education and testing"

It's pretty much inevitable, if the results of the testing have consequences,
for teacher/student/school system/etc. that what is taught will often
excessively focus on testing outcomes.

Unfortunately, it's hard not to do this to at least some degree at scale.
Without standardized testing of some sort, there isn't a lot of feedback for
how well the process is working and you more or less fall back on trust the
individual teachers and schools and everything will be just fine--which isn't
the case in the main.

~~~
analog31
It seems like maybe we're already back at that point. We went from trusting
the teachers and schools, to adopting a test that measures household income,
to hoping that we can trust the teachers and schools to educate our kids in
spite of the tests.

------
b2600
In the comedy movie "Back to School", wealthy business man Thornton Melon
hires Kurt Vonnegut to write an essay for him on Kurt Vonnegut for English
Literature class. The professor knows Melon did not write the essay and tells
him "Whoever _did_ write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt
Vonnegut!." He got an F.

~~~
Noseshine
[ _removed and replaced by this cat:_
[http://i.imgur.com/f1yeHVO.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/f1yeHVO.jpg)]

~~~
GrinningFool
I think because you're missing the point - which _was_ on topic.

It wasn't about the "F", it was about the teacher's reply to KV's essay about
himself, saying that the author (KV) didn't know anything about KV .

Missing that wouldn't cause the downvotes on its own - but combined with
comment about the offtopicness probably did it.

------
sytelus
Why the hell for-profit companies are tasked to set up the tests? This will
invariably cause disasters like this. As the article says, first they will
chose only the cheapest material available. Next, they will chose cheapest
employees they can possibly get by to write the tests. They might even
outsource whole thing to "reduce costs". For-profits may possibly work only
when end goal is well measurable, system can't be rigged and monopolies are
viciously squashed. This almost never happens in education (and prison
management) because of layers of bureaucracies. The problem here is not
standardized tests but the fact that test creation is outsourced to for-
profits. Once a for-profit gets in to driving seat they will do everything
possible to make sure they can't be driven out. They have already made
requirements that their test questions are "copyrighted" and can't be
published or even examined by 3rd parties and on so on. In other countries,
they usually have committees of senior teachers who then sets up tests with
mutual agreement for token extra pay. Why do you need for-profit for setting
tests?

------
cixin
I agree that it's useful to expose children to literature and art, but it
feels like there's no way to objectively test it...

Maybe creative writing/literature courses should give marks for the most
upvotes on Reddit (kidding, but probably more objective than current methods).

~~~
throwaway729
An essay in which the student has to present an argument would do finely. You
ask "is this a reasonable interpretation, and does the student defend this
interpretation in a logical way using the available evidence?" Not perfectly
objective, but doable.

Unfortunately, that's much more expensive than a multiple choice test.

------
kingkawn
Why are we testing anyone on poems? The point is to be exposed to the
possibilities of inducing emotional transformation through cultural creation
and consumption. What is there to test about that other than, "did you feel
it? Could you make something yourself that would also feel like something was
happening? Do it." There's no proper interpretation, no expert opinion worth
anything at all except for the salary the expert manages to squeeze out of
people overly wed to the concept of correctness.

~~~
cauterized
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 objectively. (Analogous to expecting a music
student to recognize syncopation or read musical notation.)

You can also test recognition of metaphor and simile without requiring
interpretation thereof. With allegory you get into issues of cultural exposure
to the source of the allegory, but if that source is something else in the
curriculum you could ask a student to identify the allegory without
interpreting it subjectively.

And of course, many of these techniques are used by effective writers of prose
(which we generally hope for students to become) - just typically more
sparingly.

You can also (as with visual arts and music) teach students to identify poetry
of different styles or from different eras.

Basically, you can teach and you can objectively test recognition of a lot of
techniques used by poets. These standardized tests may have been ridiculous,
but that doesn't mean that including poetry on a standardized test at all has
to be ridiculous.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
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.

~~~
cauterized
But understanding those concepts gives you the tools to construct and improve
poetry of your own.

------
Confiks
> [do you] remember the question about a “talking pineapple” on a New York
> test in 2012?

This story about "The Hare and the Pineapple" seems to have been debunked
credulously some time ago: [http://ideas.time.com/2012/05/04/what-everyone-
missed-on-the...](http://ideas.time.com/2012/05/04/what-everyone-missed-on-
the-pineapple-question/)

I can of course understand that it hints to the sentiment of resentment about
the state of standardized testing.

> The fable described several animals assuming that the pineapple must have a
> trick up its sleeve that would enable the immobile fruit to win the race,
> and when they discovered that it didn’t, they ate it. Test-takers were
> asked: Why did they eat the pineapple? The correct answer: because the
> animals were annoyed. And who was the wisest of the animals? An owl that was
> never mentioned in the passage [of the Daily News article].

> The item [The Hare and the Pineapple] went through a regular review process
> and has been used since 2004 in Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Illinois, New
> Mexico, and Florida as well as Chicago, Fort Worth and Houston. (Alabama
> used it for seven years, Delaware for five.) And in the parlance of the
> industry, the questions “perform” as they are supposed to — both in New York
> and nationally. That means it reliably measures the ability of students to
> read a passage and answer questions or make inferences from it and that the
> series of questions can differentiate between higher-performing and lower-
> performing students.

------
stillsut
The analogy is variable naming.

The skill they're testing in language arts on standardized tests is similar to
skill of naming variables, objects, functions, in programming. Famously called
one of the only 'hard' problems in coding.

Sure you could use your own house rules in your code and the program would
execute perfectly. And sure you could follow some mechanistic system:
CamelCase for classes, snake_case for functions.

But how descriptive, how much to abbreviate, how much to abstract into a
concatenated phrase representing an algorithm _is_ subjective, but worthwhile
to learn nonetheless. Knowing the correct answer to this multiple choice means
noticing the context, and picking out what matters the most.

------
ezoe
It reminds me a story of an Japanese test. A Japanese school was going to test
student from the text of Grave of the Fireflies by Akiyuki Nosaka. It so
happens there was a daughter of the author in the student. She came back home
and ask her father what was he thinking when he write that novel. The father,
who is also the author, said, "I was trying so hard to meet the deadline."

So she answered so in the tomorrow's test "Explain the intent of the author
when he write this novel", and she failed.

------
goodjam
There is a wonderfull joke in talmud when two rabbis argue about some problem.
One says: Let's call Jehova and ask him directly! So Jehova comes but the
other rabbi tells him: God go away, you did your thing now let us wise men
discuss about this. God says oh my god you are right and he leaves.

~~~
schoen
The original is much more evocative:
[http://jhom.com/topics/voice/bat_kol_bab.htm](http://jhom.com/topics/voice/bat_kol_bab.htm)

------
cjmoran
Seems to be about on-par with the way high-school English is taught, honestly
(at least in my area). I remember my English teacher dedicating a full class
period to the FIRST TWO WORDS in "The Scarlet Letter" (the words being "A
throng"). I found it absolutely nonsensical and told her as much, but even
though much of the class agreed, she shut down our complaints and kept
teaching this way.

Later in the year she began scrutinizing yet another book at the molecular
level, but one of the kids in our class was the son of this book's author. He
ran our teacher's analysis by his father, the author, and the guy found our
teacher's reasoning hilariously inaccurate.

I'm all for teaching kids literacy, but there's only so much meaning that can
be gleaned from any given passage of text. At some point you're assigning
meaning where there really is none, and I felt this was prevalent in some SAT
questions and other standardized tests I endured during K-12. This was in a
very well-regarded school district: CHCCS in North Carolina.

------
coldcode
I still can't understand how standardized testing is useful for anything. The
only true result of an educational system isn't apparent until years later. I
assume it's popular for political and business reasons (testing companies are
all for profit) which ultimately have nothing to do with children learning.

~~~
aianus
> I still can't understand how standardized testing is useful for anything.

It's the only fair and economic way to assign limited slots in post-secondary
institutions. Assigning them subjectively leads to racism and corruption (see:
Harvard et al. setting Jewish and now Asian quotas and the many undeserving
rich/famous students that are admitted instead)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-
di...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-
discriminating-against-jews-2014-12)

------
linuxhansl
Perhaps related, an old piece by Richards Feynman on bad physics text books:
[http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm](http://www.textbookleague.org/103feyn.htm)

------
caseysoftware
Years ago, I volunteered with a high school drama department and helped them
design and build sets, lighting, etc. At one point, I went along on a
competition where they delivered a piece written by the director.

During scoring, they got near perfect marks across the board on delivery,
characterization, etc... and were hammered on "interpretation of the author's
work." I asked one of the judges about it at the time and was told "they
obviously didn't study the author's other works to understand his intent."

Our education system is broken.. in silly and sometimes dangerous ways.

------
mkagenius
I remember my teacher teaching us a poem, dissecting it line by line. It took
1 month or more to complete the poem.

On most of the lines, he was overthinking and trying to find out some sort of
hidden meaning in it. It was annoying.

------
kstenerud
It's the same problem as any kind of training or testing system: The people
employed to build and manage it are neither in prestigious nor high paying
jobs, so there is little competition for their position, and little incentive
for creative, thoughtful people to fill those positions.

It actually gets worse, because the bureaucracy mires everything in so much
red tape that innovation becomes all but an impossibility, as any independent
thought is quickly stamped out.

So yeah, it's no wonder that the tests are written by the dim witted and
unimaginative.

------
alexvoda
Personally I had sort of an epiphany when I discovered tvtropes.org . I
discovered a different way of analyzing a work of art. A purely descriptive
approach. I find this collaborative medium attempting to decipher why
something works or doesn't work in an art piece far more productive than what
I was thought in school (in Romania) about about literary analysis and
attempting to extract meaning from any word. I would comment more about this
but I don't have the time now.

------
sambe
Regardless of what you think of the tests, it might just be possible that
writing poems and analysing them is not an identical skill. I'm pretty sure
that most professional sportsmen can't analyse why they play a particular shot
or pass (other than "it looked good, he was open" etc).

There's probably a separate argument about why we'd want to train generations
of passable poetry critics though...

------
dageshi
cixin, your comment is presently [dead], it seems like you've posted too much
since your account was created (your comments seem fine to me).

~~~
andybak
I was wondering the same about why cixin was dead. Interesting heuristic in
the HN codebase there. Is it a permanent death or does it back off after a
cool down?

~~~
JshWright
Users with a fair amount of 'karma' can vote to bring it back (which is likely
what happened here).

------
automatwon
_any test that questions the motivations of the author without asking the
author is a big baloney sandwich_

English 101, Homework Assignment: Write a 8 page literary essay about book-X

I presented my thesis and draft to the the instructor. She told me that I was
completely wrong and that this paper would receive an inadequate grade. I
admit, like all my other English papers, this one was BS, too. That doesn't
inherently mean it's incorrect, though. I went to the library, sifted through
a bunch of academic journals (which the instructor believed to be the only
legitimate source of truth, unsurprisingly), and found an article with a
thesis and supporting evidence that paralleled my argument! I showed the
instructor this paper, and just like that she said "oh, okay. The thesis makes
sense." I received an A+ on the paper.

Informatics 101 'Social Networks', Pop quiz! "HTML is for the following...
(check all that apply)"

Times up! The correct answer is "specifying the LOOK and FEEL of the webpage."

It was 2011, and the professor of this "Social Networks" class, ironically,
had been throwing 'Web 2.0' all over his powerpoint slides. I politely
consulted him after class, as to not embarrass him that HTML with inline
styling is frowned upon, and styling should be specified in CSS stylesheets.
It was a matter of principle, rather than pragmatism, that I wasn't penalized
for this invalid quiz question. He responded "we can talk about JAVA and the
document-object model if you'd like." I immediately dropped the course.

Oh, and he has tenure. (Fortunately in the 'Informatics' department, rather
than my own Computer Science department)

My point with these two anecdotes is that in the case of the 'Social Networks'
professor I could have, in theory, filed a complaint to university should the
professor refuse to acknowledge the invalidity of his grading and material.
The English professor asymmetrically held power. My grade is dependent on what
she deems a valid interpretation. Sure there's a "rubric", but the same thesis
I had went from a D to an A+ in a matter of seconds.

In both cases, I grew my distaste of academia. Despite abhorring my English
class, I do appreciate nonsense literature. It satirizes the intellectuals
randomly throwing around fancy words like 'Web 2.0', 'Java' and 'document-
object-model' in the same sentence, the intellectuals who base validity solely
on academic authority, the intellectuals who try to standardize intellect. I
leave you with the poem Jabberwocky, by the master Lewis Carroll.

 _Twas brillig, and the slithy toves

Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:

All mimsy were the borogoves,

And the mome raths outgrabe.

"Beware the Jabberwock, my son!

The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!

Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun

The frumious Bandersnatch!"_

~~~
al2o3cr
" I went to the library, sifted through a bunch of academic journals (which
the instructor believed to be the only legitimate source of truth,
unsurprisingly), and found an article with a thesis and supporting evidence
that paralleled my argument! I showed the instructor this paper, and just like
that she said "oh, okay. The thesis makes sense.""

Congratulations, you just learned the difference between making
unsubstantiated assertions and producing research.

~~~
kefka
This is a classic appeal from authority. Is the idea worth
discussing/debating/exploring? If not, leave it. If so, explore it. But this
"professor's" opinion is tied to someone else who published as the authority.

All in all, it's a great way to encourage group-think. But then again, so are
most academic departments.

------
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.

~~~
throwaway729
In some sense, this problem at least indicates we're _trying_ to do something
right.

Some knowledge is both necessary and testable: arithmetic, geometry,
algorithmic solutions to common problems and properties of those algorithms,
spelling of common words, basic grammar, many scientific
facts/ideas/techniques.

The learning objectives of Common Core and other curriculum are ambitious --
they want to capture that "deep knowledge" you mention, and are often informed
by input from subject matter experts.

However, the realities of modern schooling and assessment are not sufficiently
resource-rich to fulfill and measure fulfillment of those standards.

~~~
halspero
Well physical quantities like length, time can be measured. Also fungible
goods like wheat, oil. But knowledge is differentiated, non-homogenous and
subject-specific. So it isn't measurable. Memorised facts like spellings,
historical dates and common types of exam questions can be counted but these
aren't useful in themselves. Knowledge is information that can _do_ things.

~~~
throwaway729
I feel like knowledge is one of those "I know it with I see it" type things.
It can be assessed, but not systematically via a multiple choice standardized
test. Which puts a lot of trust in the judgement of teachers.

Not exactly a politically viable solution in America.

~~~
halspero
"I know it with I see it". Yes indeed. One has to interact with a person to
know that he knows stuff.

------
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.

~~~
Noseshine
The question of that one poem of hers that she would prefer not to be used
only is a small side-issue, the main issue she writes about is that many
questions are made-up and arbitrary, you cannot answer them from actual
knowledge.

------
DenisM
Woody Allen has covered this problem in one of his movies. This clip is under
3 minutes and worth watching in my opinion.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sXJ8tKRlW3E](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sXJ8tKRlW3E)

------
spodek
Tests aren't for students, they're for administrators.

When you process that view, educational systems make more sense, however
tragic.

------
tehabe
If I could just change one thing in education. I would outlaw multiple choice
questions.

------
tinus_hn
If you can answer the questions in the test correctly your level is the at
least the highest level that can be measured by the test.

Why would it be a reasonable assumption that her level is the highest that can
be measured? Should the test be changed so mediocre people can get the maximum
score?

------
hmate9
Analysing poetry was the stupidest thing I had to do in school.

------
z3t4
jusy like with IQ tests the right answer is not the most logical or deepest,
but the most naive.

~~~
ClayFerguson
That is so true. Frustrated me so much as a student, and even an adult taking
interview tests as a software developer. If you happen to know more about the
subject than the person who wrote the test question, frequently (or at least
from time to time) you will see questions with multiple correct answers, and
end up having to guess.

------
bane
One of the trust destroying parts of my K-12 was poetry interpretation. It
became clear very quickly that we were being "given" the desired
interpretation during class and not really taught to actually interpret the
works.

I once challenged the head of my high school English department over the
interpretation of a particular poem. They had weighed it down with layer upon
layers of symbolism and interpretation but never able to answer the
fundamental question of whether or not we were inventing meaning and attaching
symbols and thus creating interpretation or the author intended this in his
work.

I wasn't saying that our analysis wasn't important, but I still feel it's an
important distinction that the pedagogy wasn't making and I got the feeling
that compliance to the accepted interpretation was more desired than being
able to interpret the work yourself.

Eventually I got so upset, I went and did some research and hunted down some
interviews with the author which discussed the interpretation and in those
interviews he explicitly called out the specific line of interpretation we
were being taught as both nonsense and not at all what he meant in that
particular piece and not how he generally writes.

I printed out these interviews, including revelation that the title had been
added by an editor years later, made copies, highlighted the relevant sections
and turned them in instead of my analysis paper and took the F. It broke all
of the trust I had in the education system after that and I very much turned
"off" as a student after that.

Later in college, when I felt my grades were more important to my future, I
killed that little bit inside myself that fought the status quo and just
regurgitated the accepted interpretation. I even became so good at it I found
myself into various honors lit courses as a CS student. But I knew it was
mostly nonsense and I honestly feel kind of ashamed at having learned to excel
in the subject by become such a bullshit artist.

The experience was so poor that it's left a lifelong bad taste in my mouth for
poetry and various other artforms that lend themselves to deep analysis and
interpretation. It's largely ruined modern art for me and I find myself
veering away from "intellectually challenging" works because I'm not sure if
the meaning I'm getting is real, or if I'm supposed to give in to some popular
interpretation -- which inevitably makes me feel like I'm being snookered.

Interestingly, modern analysis of that same poem now seem to agree with my
young take on it and not the hard-line we were being force fed in high school
(an invented anti-communism attachment) - but it seems only after the author
made a particular point at becoming very vocal against the status quo. So
small victories?

    
    
       so much depends
       upon
    
       a red wheel
       barrow
    
       glazed with rain
       water
    
       beside the white
       chickens
    
       ~William Carlos Williams

------
JoeAltmaier
English teachers serve to train a new generation of English teachers. Its a
strange stable loop that formed in our educational system. The rest of us look
on in confusion as they babble about imaginary features of written works that
only they are competent to adjudicate.

