kitchen table math, the sequel: good news from the state tests for once

Saturday, May 5, 2012

good news from the state tests for once

Robert Pondiscio on Pineapplegate 

The kids interviewed in the Times seem to know exactly what's wrong with the pineapple item.
Posted by at

7 comments:

gasstationwithoutpumps said...

I'm not so sure that questions were as bad as people claim. Read my post at http://gasstationwithoutpumps.wordpress.com/2012/04/22/new-yorkers-opposed-to-nonsense-stories/

May 6, 2012 at 8:12 PM
lgm said...

I thought the questions were all solvable if the English course included all that it should and the student recalled the trickster stories from Grade 3.

The Wash. Post had the original on their website.

May 7, 2012 at 6:42 AM
Anonymous said...

Question 8 ("Which animal spoke the wisest words?") seems iffy. I'd go with owl, but none of the animals seemed particularly wise:

*) Hare expected to win. Well, duh! Also, the Hare knew that the pineapple wasn't an animal :-)

*) Moose realized that there had to be a trick. But the moose was wrong, so how wise can this be?

*) Crow makes an excellent guess about the pineapple's plan. But is wrong.

*) Owl observes that pineapples don't have sleeves. This is correct, but kinda literal.

I wouldn't be too surprised if any of these answers were the "correct" one.

The rest of the questions look fine for an 8th grader.

I like the story :-)

-Mark Roulo

May 7, 2012 at 8:58 AM
Catherine Johnson said...

The story is fabulous!

Question 8 is the bad question, for sure, but I also object to the question about how the animals would have felt if they'd backed the hare instead of the pineapple, too.

The problem with the test is that the people writing the questions don't seem to understand that the story is a parody, not a 'straight' work of fiction.

In a parody, the 'implied author' or the 'narrator' (or whatever term English professors would use today), is completely different from the narrator of a straight, dramatic story.

There really are no independent characters in a parody, and you shouldn't ask questions based in the premise that their are. The characters exist to spoof the characters in the original.

The proper questions would be ABOUT parody; you'd want kids to know what fable is being parodied; you'd want them to be able to identify tone, and so on.

That question set makes me appreciate the SAT.

May 7, 2012 at 1:57 PM
Catherine Johnson said...

PLUS....fiction isn't nonfiction.

The questions treat the story as if it is no different from a news account of a hare racing a pineapple.

Ridiculous.

May 7, 2012 at 1:58 PM
Catherine Johnson said...

PLUS....fiction isn't nonfiction.

The questions treat the story as if it is no different from a news account of a hare racing a pineapple.

Ridiculous.

May 7, 2012 at 1:58 PM
Catherine Johnson said...

I love the story, too. It's delightful.

James Thurber wrote an entire book of fable parodies that's also terrific.

May 7, 2012 at 1:59 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)