Comment by philliphaydon

6 years ago

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.

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

  • 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.