小说与文学2019huffpost.com
我答不出关于我自己诗歌的标准化试题（2017）
I Can’t Answer Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems (2017)
导读
诗人 Sara Holbrook 发现自己写的诗被编进标准化考试，却答不对关于它的选择题；文章借此质疑阅读测试把丰富的解读压缩成唯一的“正确答案”。写作者值得读，因为它提醒我们：作品的效果最终发生在文本与读者之间，而不是藏在作者私人的心意里。
可以直接用的写作要点
- 01
作者本人答不对关于自己诗的考题，说明“作者意图”不是理解作品的唯一钥匙；写作时要把意图落到字面上，让读者能从文本本身看到依据。
- 02
分段、断行的位置最好能被文本内部的结构变化支撑（如话题从回忆转向焦虑），而不只是“读起来感觉对”。
- 03
考题问的往往是“所给选项中最合适的一个”，而不是“作者心里想什么”；修改时也要区分自己的主观感觉与文本的客观效果。
- 04
不要为了迎合外部评价体系而写作——把意义完全交给“标准答案”，只会训练出正确却空洞的套话。
HN 评论精选
标准化阅读题逼学生复述“官方解读”，奖励迎合与编造，而非独立思考。
我一直觉得老师假装对百年前作家的文本分析握有“正确答案”很荒唐，对还在世的作者居然也一样。有些解读牵强、随意、凭空编造，却被当成唯一正解；我提出另一种解读——即便我知道官方答案、只是不同意——就被判不及格。我几乎可以肯定，多数作家只是写了点什么，并没想那么多，并非人人都在反复琢磨每一行；就算琢磨的人，也未必为了老师期待的那个结果。而且作为孩子，你绝不能说某位经典作家没意思、文本无聊、看不出才华——它已被社会认可，所以它就是好的，你必须说出它好的理由，哪怕你并不这么认为；实际上你得复述你知道的“主流说法”，而不是形成自己的看法。这恰恰是学校本应教的反面。我们奇怪假新闻为什么有效？因为我们教孩子重复流行观点、为好看而编造，还让他们知道不这么做要付代价，而我们乐意当那个收代价的人。有这种感受的人通常去走科学道路了。
sametmax查看英文原文
I always though how silly it was for teachers to pretend they got the correct answer in a text analysis of a century old author. Apparently it's even true for authors that are still alive. Some things seemed so far fetched, so random, so made up. And yet it was supposed to be _the_ right answer. When I offered another one, even knowing the official one but disagreeing, I was graded as failing. Hell, I'm pretty certain most writers just wrote something, and never though about it more. Not all of them are pondering, rewriting every line. And even the ones that do don't necessarily do it for the result the teacher expects. And as a kid, you certainly can't say a classic author is not interesting. You can't say the text is boring, that you don't see talent in it, that you didn't learn anything from it. It has been validated by society, hence it's good. Now you have to say why you think it is, even if you don't. Actually you have to say what you know what the status quo is, which means repeating something you read elsewhere instead of forming a opinion from that and what you think. The opposite of what's school is supposed to teach. We wonder why fake news and bullshit work ? It's because we teach kids to repeat popular opinions and make up things because they look good. We teach them that not only there is a price to pay for not doing that, but that we are ok with being the ones making them pay it. People that felt like that usually went the science road. It's not a bad thing, but it's a positive feedback loop. It means fields in desperate needs of honesty and pragmatism are only welcoming bullshiters and conformists.
高得离谱的分数线筛出的是“会备考的人”，而不是真正有天赋的人。
这文章读着有趣。碰巧我女儿刚参加一个“资优班”测试，按学区建议她没做任何准备，一门科目考了 95%，可录取线是 98%！看到这个数字我直翻白眼——意味着只取 98、99 百分位。一年级孩子要考到那个分数，几乎得题题全对。有点统计常识就知道，这种分数线是搬起石头砸自己的脚：你筛出来的更可能是“备考过的考生”，而不是资优生。我恭喜了女儿的成绩，我们出去吃饭，甜点吃了好吃的酥皮点心。人生太短，不值得浪费在这些愚蠢的考试上。
dnprock查看英文原文
This article is fun to read. Incidentally, my daughter just took a test for a gifted program. She didn't study for it as recommended by our school district. She scored 95% in one subject. But the qualified cut-off rate is 98%! My eyes just rolled looking at that number. That means they only pick 98 and 99 percentiles. For a first grader to score that high, she needs to answer the exam perfectly. If you have some statistics training, you'll see this score is like shooting yourself in the foot. You're more likely selecting prepared test takers than gifted students. I congratulated my daughter on her score. We went out for dinner and got tasty pastries for dessert. Life is too short to waste our time on these dumb tests.
用一首讽刺诗点出“诗人想说什么”式提问的荒谬：诗人并非表达失败，只是不按考题的方式说话。
前美国桂冠诗人 Billy Collins 写过一首关于此事的诗《The Effort》：“有人愿意和我一起，朝那些爱问‘诗人想说什么’的老师扔几颗小石子吗？——好像 Thomas Hardy 和 Emily Dickinson 挣扎良久终究失败，成了笨嘴拙舌的可怜虫，咬着笔杆盯着窗外找线索。是啊，似乎 Whitman、Amy Lowell 等人只能尝试而后失败，可我们 Springfield 高中 Parker 老师第三节英语课的同学，靠这些思考题，却能成功说出那位可怜诗人说不出的东西，而且这一切都能在被称为午餐的那场鸡蛋沙拉金枪鱼大乱斗之前完成。”后面还有几节。
philips查看英文原文
Former US poet laureate Billy Collins wrote a poem about this sort of thing: The Effort Would anyone care to join me in flicking a few pebbles in the direction of teachers who are fond of asking the question: "What is the poet trying to say?" as if Thomas Hardy and Emily Dickinson had struggled but ultimately failed in their efforts— inarticulate wretches that they were, biting their pens and staring out the window for a clue. Yes, it seems that Whitman, Amy Lowell and the rest could only try and fail but we in Mrs. Parker's third-period English class here at Springfield High will succeed with the help of these study questions in saying what the poor poet could not, and we will get all this done before that orgy of egg salad and tuna fish known as lunch. It continues on for a few more stanzas; consider purchasing a copy of Ballistics for the full poem. The rest of the book is filled with memorable insights as well.
反驳：考题问的是“选项中最合适的客观解读”，作者的主观意图与文本的客观结构并不矛盾。
全诗和题目在这里（附链接）。坦白说，作者有点不诚实。比如第 5 题“这个分段起了什么作用？”她说她把分段放在那儿是因为自己是表演诗人、觉得该放那儿。第一，这没回答问题——题目问的不是作者的主观心理状态，而是这个分段的客观功能；诗的主题在此处明显从对周末的回味转向对即将到来的一天的焦虑，在给出的选项里 (C) 显然是最佳答案。第二，作者的说法是循环论证：那里听起来好，是因为诗的内部结构在那里有一个断裂；她“该放那儿”的主观感受，反映的正是关于诗歌结构的客观事实。其他题目同样相当直接。网站没有复制完整试题册，但我猜题干问的不是“正确答案”，而是“所给选项中最好的答案”。考试不是要学生深挖作者心理，而是评估每个选项与诗歌客观特征之间是否一致。这不是文学分析练习，而是阅读练习（知道词义）……
rayiner查看英文原文
The whole poem and questions are here: https://www.jiskha.com/questions/1027961/Midnight-by-Sara-Holbrook-When-its-Sunday-and-its-midnight-the-weekend-put. Frankly, I think the author is being a bit disingenuous. Question 5 for example: What function does the stanza break serve? She says she put it where it is because she's a performance poet and thought it should go there. One, that isn't the question. The question isn't asking about the author's subjective state of mind, but to remark on the objective function of the stanza break. The subject of the poem clearly shifts at that point from reflecting on the weekend to talking about the anxiety of the upcoming day. Out of the answers presented, (C) is clearly the best answer. Two, the author's point simply begs the question. The break sounds good there because there is a structural break in the underlying poem. Her subjective impression of where the break should go reflects an objective fact about the structure of the poem. The other questions are likewise quite straightforward. The website doesn't reproduce the full test booklet, but I suspect the prompt does not ask for the "right answer" but "the best answer out of the choices presented." The test is not asking students to plumb the depths of the author's pscyhe, but evaluate consistency or inconsistency between each answer choice and the objective aspects of the poem. It's not an exercise in literary analysis, it's an exercise in reading (knowing the meaning of words) and logical analysis. Take Question 6: "The train is important to the poem because it represents..." Who knows what the author meant the train to represent? But to an objective observer, C ("following a planned routine") clearly "fits" the text better than the other answers. That's all the test is asking students to figure out.
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