Stuff we're reading / watching / listening to

[Whistler]

I was thinking of going to one of the HPMOR wrap parties, but the closest one is up in Salt Lake... maybe I should do my own?

@Emiliana, what kind of problems with the testing system do you see?

[Dead Cat]

I've been all over Methods of Rationality these past few weeks, it's a bit ridiculous. But I haven't been planning to go to a party for it (unless 'twere to happen in Provo).

[Whistler]

Maybe I should have a party next month, WHEN I LIVE IN PROVO woooo

[Portia]

Rereading Persuasion. The protagonists are the same age as me and my boyfriend (27 and 31, respectively). I think it's Austen's best novel, easily. So much snark! And the relationship feels so real and vital. Unfortunately, I don't have many personality traits in common with the heroine (I'm more Mary Crawford than Anne Elliot), but I definitely relate to it on a very different level than I did eight or so years ago.

[Katya]

Rereading Persuasion. The protagonists are the same age as me and my boyfriend (27 and 31, respectively). I think it's Austen's best novel, easily. So much snark! And the relationship feels so real and vital. Unfortunately, I don't have many personality traits in common with the heroine (I'm more Mary Crawford than Anne Elliot), but I definitely relate to it on a very different level than I did eight or so years ago.

Persuasion is my favorite Jane Austen book. I like it because it's not about falling in love for the first time, but instead it's about fixing a broken relationship, which strikes me as more similar to the actual work of maintaining a relationship.

[Emiliana]

@Emiliana, what kind of problems with the testing system do you see?

Hoooo, boy. I'll limit myself to the ones specifically brought to mind by the book.

In the first chapter, the author talks about compiling reading passages for a national test that never ended up getting off the ground. She mentions passages that were thrown out by an anti-bias committee because they were considered unfair to certain groups of students. She gives an example of a passage about mountain climbing that was excluded:

The majority maintained that the story contained "regional bias," because it was about hiking and mountain climbing, which favors students who live in regions where these activities are common. ... Regional bias, in this instance, means that children should not be expected to read or comprehend stories set in unfamiliar terrain. A story that happened in a desert would be "biased" against children who have never lived in a desert, and a story set in a tropical climate would be biased against those who have never lived in a tropical climate. Consider the impoverishment of imagination that flows from such assumptions: No reading passage on a test may have a specific geographical setting; every event must occur in a generic locale. Under these assumptions, no child should be expected to understand a story set in a locale other than the one that he or she currently lives in or in a locale that has no distinguishing characteristics.

I think Ravitch fundamentally misunderstands what "bias" means in the context of a standardized test. Basically, it means that questions and reading passages should measure skills in a vacuum; in other words, they should be equally difficult for all students who take the test. The test that she was trying to create was intended to be given to EVERY fourth-grader in the nation. Students are taught to "access prior knowledge" in order to fully understand a text -- so if fourth-graders living in Colorado are almost guaranteed to have more prior knowledge about hiking than fourth-graders living in Texas, then the test is not measuring their skills in a vacuum. Therefore it is, in a sense, biased.

The problem becomes that it is utterly impossible to measure reading skills in a vacuum. Some students in my district live in such abject poverty that they have hardly ever been out of their neighborhood. Their experiences are so limited that they lack prior knowledge about much of ANYTHING. Sure, those kids' reading scores are low partially because they lack reading skills, but they're also low because of the nature of the tests.

Part of my goal as a reading teacher, of course, is to broaden students' experiences through reading. When we read a story about an adopted child, or a story about hunting, or a magazine article about The Sudan, they get to have those experiences. They wouldn't be as successful at approaching those types of texts in a standardized test setting as some other kids, but they still get to be exposed to them. Ravitch implies that the Political Correctness Police make that type of exposure impossible...but that's only true to the extent to which teachers only give texts that are identical to the type of text students will see on the tests.

Unfortunately, my district pushes us to do exactly that--"students should be exposed to material that is tested in the way in which it is tested." This is a direct quote from one of my higher-ups. Novels aren't tested, therefore MY DISTRICT INSTRUCTS US NOT TO TEACH NOVELS.

Let that sink in a little bit.

tl;dr: "Teaching to the test" is killing public education.

[Digit]

Teaching base-10 arithmetic is biased against children born with missing digits!

[Whistler]

Novels aren't tested, therefore MY DISTRICT INSTRUCTS US NOT TO TEACH NOVELS.

What a shame! It's very hard to test the kind of "broadening of experience" that novels can teach, unfortunately. I agree with you that novel-reading should be a part of one's educational reading.

Although, looking back on my own high school English classes, I think we focused too much on novels. Novel-reading, specifically, has very little professional application, although it has helped with my pursuits of book and videogame reviewing (both of which don't pay very well).

[M.O.D.A.Q.]

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is the best comedy TV show right now

[Indefinite Integral]

@Emiliana, what kind of problems with the testing system do you see?

Hoooo, boy. I'll limit myself to the ones specifically brought to mind by the book.

In the first chapter, the author talks about compiling reading passages for a national test that never ended up getting off the ground. She mentions passages that were thrown out by an anti-bias committee because they were considered unfair to certain groups of students. She gives an example of a passage about mountain climbing that was excluded:

The majority maintained that the story contained "regional bias," because it was about hiking and mountain climbing, which favors students who live in regions where these activities are common. ... Regional bias, in this instance, means that children should not be expected to read or comprehend stories set in unfamiliar terrain. A story that happened in a desert would be "biased" against children who have never lived in a desert, and a story set in a tropical climate would be biased against those who have never lived in a tropical climate. Consider the impoverishment of imagination that flows from such assumptions: No reading passage on a test may have a specific geographical setting; every event must occur in a generic locale. Under these assumptions, no child should be expected to understand a story set in a locale other than the one that he or she currently lives in or in a locale that has no distinguishing characteristics.

I think Ravitch fundamentally misunderstands what "bias" means in the context of a standardized test. Basically, it means that questions and reading passages should measure skills in a vacuum; in other words, they should be equally difficult for all students who take the test. The test that she was trying to create was intended to be given to EVERY fourth-grader in the nation. Students are taught to "access prior knowledge" in order to fully understand a text -- so if fourth-graders living in Colorado are almost guaranteed to have more prior knowledge about hiking than fourth-graders living in Texas, then the test is not measuring their skills in a vacuum. Therefore it is, in a sense, biased.

The problem becomes that it is utterly impossible to measure reading skills in a vacuum. Some students in my district live in such abject poverty that they have hardly ever been out of their neighborhood. Their experiences are so limited that they lack prior knowledge about much of ANYTHING. Sure, those kids' reading scores are low partially because they lack reading skills, but they're also low because of the nature of the tests.

Part of my goal as a reading teacher, of course, is to broaden students' experiences through reading. When we read a story about an adopted child, or a story about hunting, or a magazine article about The Sudan, they get to have those experiences. They wouldn't be as successful at approaching those types of texts in a standardized test setting as some other kids, but they still get to be exposed to them. Ravitch implies that the Political Correctness Police make that type of exposure impossible...but that's only true to the extent to which teachers only give texts that are identical to the type of text students will see on the tests.

Unfortunately, my district pushes us to do exactly that--"students should be exposed to material that is tested in the way in which it is tested." This is a direct quote from one of my higher-ups. Novels aren't tested, therefore MY DISTRICT INSTRUCTS US NOT TO TEACH NOVELS.

Let that sink in a little bit.

tl;dr: "Teaching to the test" is killing public education.

ugh...I am sorry. So sorry. I think we test way too much. Our English students will start taking their end-of-year tests soon because there is so much testing to get through (and it is all computer based, and we don't have a device for every student...)

[Digit]

I saw a commercial celebrating hardworking people, showing a montage of machinists, cake decorators, delivery drivers, etc. working with smiles on their faces, punching their time cards, and moving along. The background music was Takin' Care of Business by Bachman-Turner Overdrive, which was funny. Despite the catchy tune and the chorus that does mention business, the song's sentiment is kind of the opposite of that commercial.

It's the work that we avoid
And we're all self-employed
We love to work at nothing all day

[Digit]

I just started watching the show Mad Men on Netflix. Everybody smokes! Also that's the first time I saw Flo from the Progressive Insurance ads not being Flo from the Progressive Insurance ads.

[Shrinky Dink]

I'm pretty sure I've seen Flo in a Glade commercial involving yoga.

[Digit]

Stephen Hawking sings the Galaxy Song

[Digit]

The Hipster Paradox: based on a mathematical formula, when nonconformists try and stray from mainstream trends, they oftentimes end up making the same choices because they are too slow to spot trends that are no longer popular.

As a result, hipsters so bent on being unique tend to adopt similar styles and ironically become uniform.

[Whistler]

:'-( nonconforming is so difficult

[Digit]

Really nice acapella rendition of the overworld theme from Super Mari Bros 2. That's one of about two video games I remember beating as a little kid. The other was Kung Fu on the original 8-bit NES.

[Digit]

Ha.

I'm of the generation that played Oregon Trail on Apple IIe computers with green monochrome screens and 5¼" floppy disks.

[Digit]

Interesting. Tandy, which once owned Radio Shack and whose TRS-80 outsold the Apple ][ by 5-to-1 until 1982, started out as a leather goods company.

[Whistler]

I have been reading the Mistborn trilogy and am halfway through the last book. The writing is painful, but supposedly there's an enormous payoff at the end, so I'm sticking it out.