Comment by macspoofing
6 years ago
The problem is you're trying to educate millions of kids and you want some common standard to judge them against (to figure things out like college admissions). You can't just say "put down whatever and we'll judge it by how you feel or how I feel".
Besides, you're not testing their artistic abilities, you're testing learning comprehension and and things they learned in English class. Do you know that we're graduating kids who are functionally illiterate? I think that's a bigger problem to tackle than worrying about how poetry is taught to kids.
>The point is that applying this model to art, something which has been essential to the human experience for tens of thousands of years, is a stultification of our culture for no better reason than that we want to measure something.
You say that but what are you basing this on? Just personal feelings?
>I would hesitate to dismiss the damage done by a system that produces questions like these at the societal scale.
I disagree. These are perfectly fine questions. In fact, if you converted to the education system to the montessori-style system that would be disastrous.
My point is that conditioning children to think of art in this formulaic way can only be attributed to ignorance or malice. There is no need to test for reading comprehension using a banal interpretation of poetry.
For evidence of the significance of art in the human experience, check the historical record. The oldest musical instruments are something like 50,000 years old. As far as I know, similar artifacts were not produced by any other hominids. On both the societal and the individual level, creative inspiration has done more to help people exceed their boundaries than any systemized rubric ever has.
>My point is that conditioning children to think of art in this formulaic way can only be attributed to ignorance or malice.
I can believe that that this is your contention.
>There is no need to test for reading comprehension using a banal interpretation of poetry.
You say things as if they were obviously true.
>For evidence of the significance of art in the human experience, check the historical record.
OK.
I'm not sure what this red herring is supposed to do for your argument.