<story><title>I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)</title><url>https://www.huffpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-bad-i-cant-answer-these_b_586d5517e4b0c3539e80c341</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>segmondy</author><text>Those classes are all about conformity.   It&amp;#x27;s about learning how to play the game of life and not going against the grain.  &amp;quot;smart students&amp;quot; learn to read their teachers and know how to feedback the expected answers even if they don&amp;#x27;t agree or believe in it.   A lesson that&amp;#x27;s very much needed in life.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;quot;smart founders&amp;quot; learned how to feed BS that their audience expected back to them.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;amp; paintings.  It was all subjective and her own opinion.  I fed her back her crap and I passed the class.&lt;p&gt;If you haven&amp;#x27;t learned this yet, it&amp;#x27;s not too late.  The world is full on chicken shit.</text></item><item><author>sametmax</author><text>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&amp;#x27;s even true for authors that are still alive.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Hell, I&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;t necessarily do it for the result the teacher expects.&lt;p&gt;And as a kid, you certainly can&amp;#x27;t say a classic author is not interesting. You can&amp;#x27;t say the text is boring, that you don&amp;#x27;t see talent in it, that you didn&amp;#x27;t learn anything from it. It has been validated by society, hence it&amp;#x27;s good. Now you have to say why you think it is, even if you don&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s school is supposed to teach.&lt;p&gt;We wonder why fake news and bullshit work ? It&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;People that felt like that usually went the science road. It&amp;#x27;s not a bad thing, but it&amp;#x27;s a positive feedback loop. It means fields in desperate needs of honesty and pragmatism are  only welcoming bullshiters and conformists.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jknoepfler</author><text>I disagree entirely. Traditional humanities courses are in general about learning intellectual history, contemporary thinking, and critical thinking.&lt;p&gt;Mistaking the worst-case for the central tendency is a classic fallacy that is easy to fall into when expressing contempt.&lt;p&gt;Bullshit companies don&amp;#x27;t raise millions of dollars because people study poetry or art history. They seem to raise millions of dollars because there&amp;#x27;s a long tail of bad startups and a long tail of bad investment decisions, and the intersection of those can be cherry-picked to create the illusion that &amp;quot;the world is full of chicken shit&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;The world does indeed contain some chicken shit, but chicken shit is not the central tendency of the world. Terrible startups get funding less frequently than good ones. Good technical ideas often raise millions of dollars and thrive, but sometimes they fail despite their merits. Sometimes &amp;quot;chicken shit&amp;quot; succeeds, sometimes good ideas fail, but it&amp;#x27;s foolish to mistake the exception for the rule.&lt;p&gt;But again, all this has very little to do with poetry.</text></comment>
<story><title>I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)</title><url>https://www.huffpost.com/entry/standardized-tests-are-so-bad-i-cant-answer-these_b_586d5517e4b0c3539e80c341</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>segmondy</author><text>Those classes are all about conformity.   It&amp;#x27;s about learning how to play the game of life and not going against the grain.  &amp;quot;smart students&amp;quot; learn to read their teachers and know how to feedback the expected answers even if they don&amp;#x27;t agree or believe in it.   A lesson that&amp;#x27;s very much needed in life.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;quot;smart founders&amp;quot; learned how to feed BS that their audience expected back to them.&lt;p&gt;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 &amp;amp; paintings.  It was all subjective and her own opinion.  I fed her back her crap and I passed the class.&lt;p&gt;If you haven&amp;#x27;t learned this yet, it&amp;#x27;s not too late.  The world is full on chicken shit.</text></item><item><author>sametmax</author><text>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&amp;#x27;s even true for authors that are still alive.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;Hell, I&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;t necessarily do it for the result the teacher expects.&lt;p&gt;And as a kid, you certainly can&amp;#x27;t say a classic author is not interesting. You can&amp;#x27;t say the text is boring, that you don&amp;#x27;t see talent in it, that you didn&amp;#x27;t learn anything from it. It has been validated by society, hence it&amp;#x27;s good. Now you have to say why you think it is, even if you don&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s school is supposed to teach.&lt;p&gt;We wonder why fake news and bullshit work ? It&amp;#x27;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.&lt;p&gt;People that felt like that usually went the science road. It&amp;#x27;s not a bad thing, but it&amp;#x27;s a positive feedback loop. It means fields in desperate needs of honesty and pragmatism are  only welcoming bullshiters and conformists.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kbenson</author><text>&amp;gt; It was all subjective and her own opinion. I fed her back her crap and I passed the class.&lt;p&gt;I had an English class I thought was like this.  I generally tried not to do that unless I had to, but given this English teacher had given me a D and C- on the first two essays (which is all we were graded on), I decided for the third essay I would get as much help as possible directly from her to see exactly what she wanted and try to provide exactly that, since she obviously didn&amp;#x27;t want &lt;i&gt;my&lt;/i&gt; opinion.  By the third visit during her office hours, she had very little feedback and thought it looked good.  I got a C+.  Visiting her afterwards I had her review the essay to give me pointers on what I could have done better.  Her exact words, which I remember to this day, were &amp;quot;all I can say is it doesn&amp;#x27;t feel authentic.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;That class broke me on the subject of English.  It was the last required English class for my major, and I made sure not to take another elective in English (and I rather liked the subject before that).  Sometimes you&amp;#x27;re damned if you do, damned if you don&amp;#x27;t.</text></comment>