Psycho-Babble Politics Thread 1112946

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standardised testing

Posted by alexandra_k on December 13, 2020, at 15:11:24

I suppose it is a combination of people intentionally trying to jumble or scramble the signal. Game the system. And something inadvertant...

Khan Academy is developing...

People are becoming more invested in it...

I see it start to become... Uh... Um...

I *want to believe* that thumbelina is intelligent. I really really really really *want to believe*. It's a very politically correct, woke, sort of an attitude to have, these days. She's female. That means she's dumb - only flip the scripe so that means she's intelligent.

Only...

*There's no evidence for her being intelligent in the text*.

None.

What does she do?

She sings. Okay...

________________________________________

I am remembering how things were for me, back in primary school, now...

So much of statistics curriculum is reading comprehension.

I read the text. I have the answer. The teacher is going to spend hours explaining it painstakingly to the class -- and half the time I'm going to have a different view or explanation as to why the answer is the way it is (did the teacher understand it or memorise the answer and come up with a made up story because he likes the sound of his own voice)?

So... You learnt to tune out / ignore teachers.

Which is the point.

Like the road signs that tell you to do things that are unsafe. And so on. So you learn not to follow instructions. So you become unteachable. Untouchable.

______________________________________

Part of it is that the people who write the questions don't seem very bright, sometimes.

The reason they give for why the answer is the way it is doesn't cohere with what they have to say about other answers. So things are arbitrary. They don't seem able to see the arbitrary.

I wonder if it is an intentional aim to scramble or make noise or corrupt the system. So it doesn't track the thing it's supposed to track...

I don't quite understand what is going on.

In learning about vector sums and doing a little calculus I see that the picture completion tasks in the UMAT (I guess we can talk about it now since the test has been obsoleted) simply were those kinds of tasks. Tasks that you would learn about if you studied maths at a private school or otherwise, likely, not.

I guess it is about gaming the system. People have this idea of a hierarchy and this idea that if their kid can get in with the 'best' group they can then their kid will fit, somehow, and be alright. I guess the idea is that they game the system together. I guess the idea is that... There is no idea. People are unthinking, basically. It's just about doing whatever you can because you can and so on.

_________________

There's this real oppression when it comes to preventing Maori from reading, writing, arithmetic. From success at academic or intellectual pursuits. TO prevent them from learning the skills that would enable them to work in or develop things in high science / technology. Chemistry. Physics. Computer Science (programming). And so on...

I want to say a lot of that comes from within Maori. I suppose it is fair to say that the only way you get to be acknowledged or hailed as a Maori leader is if you get with the programme of making sure Maori never get to develop in that way, however.

If you want to translate Dr Seuss to Maori to help Maori kids learn to read -- that's okay. If you want to do Kapa Haka or play Rugby that's okay...

If it's academics then nobody is allowed to go any faster than the slowest, however. Which is to say nobody is allowed to do anything at all.

The prizes go to the kids of the leaders and that's an end to it. And the best of the Maori should have all the titles and honors and job titles and pay checks of the non-Maori in the name of equity.

It's really crazy becuase clearly Maori understand about excellence when it comes to Rugby. They don't make the elite rugby kids play with the least athletic kid all day and not be allowed to perform at a higher level than the least athletic kid. So why different when it comes to academics?

There's a real oppressive force...

 

Re: standardised testing

Posted by alexandra_k on December 13, 2020, at 15:20:29

In reply to standardised testing, posted by alexandra_k on December 13, 2020, at 15:11:24

You see how much of the curriculum you can guess your way through.

And you think about whether study (spending time studying) would be something that would help your performance ... Or whether the kinds of questions the people make up for the tests are questions that don't do such a great job of getting at the knowledge.

Like the thumbellina question... That's just about guessing the likely attitudes and values of the person who wrote the test. Whether they would *like you* and *think you are a good student* for agreeing with their social or political or whatever views.

Rather than a test of your ability to distinguish between the content of the text and other things.

Quite a lot of the reading comprehension tasks are like that on standardised tests. I know they think they have constructed 'high end distinguisher' questions -- but they haven't.

I hate that. When you are at the place of 'sigh. what does the test writer want me to say?'

That's where the training exercises / practice questions come into their own. They tell you about what the test writers have to say in the times when they go over and above and beyond what is in the text. The kinds of attitudes and values and so on they want you to display.

I hate it how they pass it off as a test of reading comprehension. Or whatever.

I guess that's why people retreat to the sciences. Especially if they have quality instruction / teaching. Then it feels like work pays off. Like there is a return on the investment of time / work. And you get genuinely better with progress etc. I guess it's a way of encouraging people with the ability to do that to do that in fact.

Maybe that's the real sub-text. I don't know.


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