October 13, 2009, 9:30 pm
A Long, Melancholy Roar
(Being the third and final piece in a series about predators.)
On a recent evening at twilight, I was sitting on the grass in Regent’s Park — one of London’s most manicured public spaces — when I heard the fierce, melancholy sound of a lion’s roar.
I wasn’t dreaming: it was coming from the zoo. Listening to it, I began to reflect on predators — and us.
On returning home, I did some reading. I discovered that between 1990 and 2004, lions attacked 815 people in Tanzania, killing 563. Some of the victims were pulled out of bed during the night after lions forced their way inside huts. Between January 2000 and March 2004, crocodiles in Namibia attacked 35 people, killing 23. In the 34 months from January 2005 to October 2007, leopards in the Indian state of Kashmir attacked 18 people, killing 16. In the Sundarban swamps of Bangladesh, tigers killed at least 20 people last year. Dig around, and you can also find records of deaths from attacks by bears, cougars, sharks and a number of other wild beasts.
It’s hard to imagine how terrifying such a death must be. To be asleep in bed and to wake to hear a rustling sound, to see an animal leaping, to feel its breath on your face — think of the sweat, the panic, the contraction of your gut, the pounding of your heart, the gasping screams.
For many of our fellow creatures, such terrors are part of daily life: other animals exist in a world of threat that humans today rarely glimpse. These days, thankfully, we are not used to being hunted. Most of us are more likely to be struck by lightning than we are to die at the paws of a bear or the teeth of a shark. And so we spend little time in that dark, primeval place of alarm, fear, adrenaline and (perhaps) gory death. For us, death usually comes in other forms.
Riccardo Gangale/The Associated Press; Gianluigi Guercia/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images; Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times Are modern human fears misplaced?
Of our ancient enemies, microbes are now the most fearsome. Indeed, next to the figures for viruses and other infectious agents, deaths caused by predators are barely worth mentioning.
Just think: HIV/AIDS chalked up 2 million deaths across the planet in 2007 alone; tuberculosis was close behind, with more than 1,700,000. The year before, malaria escorted almost a million people to their graves. We should be far more scared of mosquitoes than we are of bears; but we’re not.
Why not? It’s hard to be sure, but my guess is that it has to do with the way our brains are wired up. Just as the moose fears the wolf and the chickadee the owl, we easily fear lions and bears because the connection between danger and the animal is clear and immediate. It is harder, I suspect, to evolve fear of a mosquito because the deadly fever it brings does not happen straight after the bite. Instead, there is a time delay of days, weeks or years. In fact, the connection between mosquito bites and malarial fever is so obscure that we weren’t sure of it until 1897. But our forebears have been making connections between predators and death for ages.
Although predators are not an important problem for most of us today, they surely were for our ancestors. Indeed, millions of years ago, fear of predators would have been one of the forces that caused our ancestors to evolve to live in groups. The seeds of our social lives were watered with blood and nurtured by the roar of the lion and the claw of the leopard.
More recently, however, it’s been the case that the mammal most likely to kill a human is: a human. Murder and war have long been more important causes of death for us than predatory wild animals.
You can see it in the landscape. In northern Romania, monasteries were fortified against marauding armies, and painted inside and out with scenes of martyrs being massacred. Further south, in Transylvania, the churches were fortified to withstand siege. In northern India, almost every town has a fort. Southern France is littered with the ruins of fortified castles and towns. In English forests, you can often find the remnants of iron-age defenses. All traces of peoples defending themselves from attack. We are our own most fearsome predator, and have been so for thousands of years.
Some other animals are also important predators of themselves. A lion has more to fear from another lion than it does from any other animal but us. Males taking over a pride routinely kill all the cubs they can find, and lions from neighboring territories sometimes kill each other. Chimpanzees kill each other at an alarming rate; and they are far more aggressive towards each other on a daily basis than we humans are.
But here’s the thing. Today, in many parts of the world, the human being most likely to cause your violent death is: you.
Yes. You are the person most likely to kill yourself violently and on purpose. Suicide rates have risen dramatically over the past 50 years. Worldwide, deaths from suicide now outnumber deaths from war and homicide together: the World Health Organization estimates that each year around one million people — predominantly men — kill themselves. The true number is probably higher, because for many countries there is no data. In some countries, suicide is now among the top ten causes of death. For the young, worldwide, it’s in the top five.
A huge effort has rightly been devoted to trying to understand the particular causes of suicide in different places — unemployment, drug addiction, relationship breakdown, intelligence, predisposing genes, what your mother ate while you were in the womb and so on.
But here’s another way to look at it. No other animal does this. Chimpanzees don’t hang themselves from trees, slit their wrists, set themselves alight, or otherwise destroy themselves. Suicide is an essentially human behavior. And it has reached unprecedented levels, especially among the young.
I’m not sure what this means. But it has made me think. We live in a way that no other animal has ever lived: our lifestyle is unprecedented in the history of the planet. Often, we like to congratulate ourselves on the cities we have built, the gadgets we can buy, the rockets we send to the moon. But perhaps we should not be so proud. Something about the way we live means that, for many of us, life comes to seem unbearable, a long, melancholy ache of despair.
This article was shocking. It gave a great amount of very interesting information. It talked about humans’ behavior and thinking. I was amazed by, “We should be far more scared of mosquitoes than we are of bears; but we’re not.” Honestly I am more afraid of a bear than a mosquito, yet as the article states that mosquito transmitted diseases are more likely to happen than a predator attack. So why are we so scared of these huge yet, not so harmful animals, “we easily fear lions and bears because the connection between danger and the animal is clear and immediate. It is harder, I suspect, to evolve fear of a mosquito because the deadly fever it brings does not happen straight after the bite.” It is funny how illogical our brain works.
Then it goes on talking about the human’s most dangerous enemy. Take a wild guess… believe it or not it is a human. “More recently, however, it’s been the case that the mammal most likely to kill a human is: a human.” Yet, even more fascinating it says that the human who is most likely to cause your violent death is: you. You would never imagine it but apparently there is something wrong with humans, because suicide rates have skies rocketed and keep increasing. Humans are supposed to be the most intelligent of all, yet No animal has ever killed himself, “Chimpanzees don’t hang themselves from trees, slit their wrists, set themselves alight, or otherwise destroy themselves. Suicide is an essentially human behavior. And it has reached unprecedented levels, especially among the young.”
There is no such thing as suicide for an animal, so why do we the “smart” creatures of earth take our own life away? The data is just unexplainable, “In some countries, suicide is now among the top ten causes of death. For the young, worldwide, it’s in the top five.” There is no justification for taking your life away, yet it is in the top causes of death. This is just plane ridiculous. The author closed his article with a very strong and true quote, which really got me thinking, “Often, we like to congratulate ourselves on the cities we have built, the gadgets we can buy, the rockets we send to the moon. But perhaps we should not be so proud. Something about the way we live means that, for many of us, life comes to seem unbearable, a long, melancholy ache of despair.” How come all animals seem to handle their problems and some of us are cowards who run away? Aren’t we supposed to be superior and brighter, yet we can’t handle everyday situations? How ironic…
jueves, 15 de octubre de 2009
martes, 13 de octubre de 2009
Freud: Interpretations Of Dreams.
For many years people have tried to understand dreams. Why do we dream? What causes dreams? What does each dream mean? Dreams are really unexplainable, “In spite of thousands of years of endeavor, little progress has been made in the scientific understanding of dreams.” It is such a broad topic that many scientist come up with different believes. As stated by Freud, “No real progress in a definite direction is as yet discernible. No real foundation of verified results has hitherto been established on which future investigators might continue to build. Every new author approaches the same problems afresh, and from the very beginning.” To make a definite conclusion is as impossible as understanding dreams.
While reading Chapter One, I became very interested in section C. It talks mainly about how dreams are caused by discomfort in our sleep. I would think nightmares are caused by a discomfort, but in general all dreams are.
As I read about dreams, it is like discussing about a religion. Everybody has different opinions and believes different things. Since dreams curiosity draggers, “Opinions differ widely in preferring this or the other factor as the cause of dreams, and in classifying them in the order of importance.”
I find it very interesting how we are sleeping, therefore the unconscious mind takes over yet, “the mind remains in constant communication with the external world.” We basically shut off everything, but are woken up by a sound or a touch. Can we be awake and asleep at the same time? How can sounds affect our dreams? For example Freud while describing dreams talks about how if you are sleeping and a door stretches, you might dream of burglars breaking in. “The argument that there is a resemblance between the dream-stimulus and the dream-content would be confirmed if, by a systematic induction of stimuli, we should succeed in producing dreams corresponding to these stimuli.”, as it was proved by Giron de Buzareingues running several experiments.
Dreams are really amazing, yet very confusing to understand. I enjoy dreaming, but wish I could understand it. In Dreams we see and experience things we wouldn’t in real life, it is an exaggerated reality, yet is it really a reality? Are dreams warnings for the futures? Is dreaming necessary? Do dreams mean something? Are the important? I just wish I could answer this questions that give me such an uncomfortable uncertainty. Are dreams our imagination just running wild?
While reading Chapter One, I became very interested in section C. It talks mainly about how dreams are caused by discomfort in our sleep. I would think nightmares are caused by a discomfort, but in general all dreams are.
As I read about dreams, it is like discussing about a religion. Everybody has different opinions and believes different things. Since dreams curiosity draggers, “Opinions differ widely in preferring this or the other factor as the cause of dreams, and in classifying them in the order of importance.”
I find it very interesting how we are sleeping, therefore the unconscious mind takes over yet, “the mind remains in constant communication with the external world.” We basically shut off everything, but are woken up by a sound or a touch. Can we be awake and asleep at the same time? How can sounds affect our dreams? For example Freud while describing dreams talks about how if you are sleeping and a door stretches, you might dream of burglars breaking in. “The argument that there is a resemblance between the dream-stimulus and the dream-content would be confirmed if, by a systematic induction of stimuli, we should succeed in producing dreams corresponding to these stimuli.”, as it was proved by Giron de Buzareingues running several experiments.
Dreams are really amazing, yet very confusing to understand. I enjoy dreaming, but wish I could understand it. In Dreams we see and experience things we wouldn’t in real life, it is an exaggerated reality, yet is it really a reality? Are dreams warnings for the futures? Is dreaming necessary? Do dreams mean something? Are the important? I just wish I could answer this questions that give me such an uncomfortable uncertainty. Are dreams our imagination just running wild?
lunes, 12 de octubre de 2009
The King of Sweden by Norman Lock
October 2009
Jesse Tangen-Mills
fiction
The King of Sweden by Norman Lock
Just as short stories came with the advent of the newspaper, so comes flash fiction, with what appears to be the permanence of internet publications. As in the past, this new genre comes with its stars, among them is Norman Lock. His oeuvre includes a series of imaginary operas written in prose, as they might have been composed by eccentric American composer Joseph Cornell, a book of metaphysical calculations that in a few sentences try to capture the universe’s totality, even a minimalist rendering of the Grimm Tales, each tale condensed to just a few sentences (available for free download as an eBook).
His most recent novel, The King of Sweden, however, relies on a much simpler plot. Somewhere in the rural United States a young girl, traumatized by the death of her mother, confused with the abandonment of her father, shortly thereafter, and is sent to an insane asylum thanks to her boyfriend, Jake, who she lovingly calls the King of Sweden. The female protagonist, a rustic with a peculiar innocence, could easily fall into the Faulknerian idiot man-child mould, but doesn’t. Rather than being dumbfounded, she’s invigorated by the natural world around her. And thanks to Lock’s poetry, so are we. Snow is “peppered” in sewers. The sun is only a “nickel in the sky.” The protagonist’s breasts are little birds. Lamps “wiggle like water when the sun is standing straight in the sky.” Lock demonstrates a keenness for bringing the inanimate to life, that can be, at its best, reminiscent of Rilke. The fresh language that Lock employs makes reading it more akin to lyric poetry than novel.
Although the plights of American rural poor have been described a thousand times over again, the cadences and descriptions of this rural America feel new. Her lover, Jake, the “King of Sweden,” tells her that her naked back “is like a river.” Even the title’s obscure allusion to a Cab Calloway’s song, that should place us somewhere in the forties, instead denies us any real certainty. We wonder, is Jake really from Sweden? He knows things about Sweden that someone from the rural poor in the 1940s wouldn’t. He has blonde hair. Like a tempered Beckett, Lock avoids the usual markers of time and place, while concentrating on the universality of detail: “crickets make a rusty noise in the grass” or “the sun is white and small in their empty branches.” Only towards the end of the novel does the story reveal the protagonists’ age and the year. She’s thirty-six and it’s 1958 when the story ends. Six of her last years have been spent in an insane asylum, after she murdered her baby, and there are few signs of the once charming “King of Sweden.” It seems that the displacement of time and place keeps the novel from petering off into melodrama.
Unfortunately, as with many of the minimalist pioneers like Amy Hepel, Gordon Lish, and Diane Williams, Lock’s prose occasionally stifles the reader with intended monotony (as is life, we’re to think). Lock writes: “Whiskey’s pretty when the light shines through. I slosh it round inside the bottle and see the yard flood beneath a golden wave. I twist the cork out and swallow some. It burns.” This sort of stop and go can be tiring, but the idiosyncratic narration gives the novel enough dynamic momentum to avoid dullness.
In many ways, this is a bildungsroman. The dovish country bumpkin, that had imagined her fling a king, kills her baby, becomes the murderer of her own child. Despite her naïve natural observations, reality infects her, perhaps starting with her mother who ambiguously tells her “It wasn’t to be,” just before dying. Then she paints the pain and frustration onto her own child, wondering, “Does he see God burnt black as mud in a singed coat?” before performing infanticide. Once in the insane asylum her delightful observations, her dark musing and post coitus cozies are traded for “the man with the crooked teeth” who brutally bathes her, and optimistic fantasies filtered through a cell window.
As with his other works, Lock’s delivers flashy slices of thought that one can scroll through. His poetic punch line-narratives read perfectly on screen. This could in part due to the author’s playwright background (he had a play in the Edinburgh Theater Festival in 1996). Words move action and vice versa, while still maintaining enough stillness to do nothing, to use Auden’s famous description of poetry. However, unlike Lock’s other works this novel is being sold only in paperback version. This may have to do with the writer’s distaste for electronic publishing, having once said, “Electricity is evanescent; paper and ink give to the thing made permanence, which is, I am aware, illusory." Still, one wonders given recent trends, how permanent paper will really be, even more so with the presence of brilliant miniaturist authors, like this one.
The King of Sweden by Norman Lock
Ravenna Press
ISBN: 098221152X
154 Pages
This is a great book review, mainly because it uses a great sense of style. The author uses proper language to describe briefly, but to the point the plot of this book. We can see this in the first lines, “Somewhere in the rural United States a young girl, traumatized by the death of her mother, confused with the abandonment of her father, shortly thereafter, and is sent to an insane asylum thanks to her boyfriend, Jake, who she lovingly calls the King of Sweden.” He does not write in any ordinary way, he engages the reader to create curiosity to find out what happens. While describing the book the author is very clear stating each idea thoroughly, clearing any doubts. As he uses parts of the book and quotes he uses a great amount of vividness, therefore making a mental image in the readers mind. I could picture this crazy insane girl and then killing her own baby. “Despite her naïve natural observations, reality infects her, perhaps starting with her mother who ambiguously tells her “It wasn’t to be,” just before dying. Then she paints the pain and frustration onto her own child, wondering, “Does he see God burnt black as mud in a singed coat?” before performing infanticide.” The author of this review uses decorum throughout, he “fits in” with the reader. He doesn’t use exotic vocabulary but uses very eloquent words to express his point.
The author goes beyond just telling the plot, he shows his analytical side and opinion, when he talks about Lock and how the poetry helps develop the book. This quote really got me thinking, “And thanks to Lock’s poetry, so are we. Snow is “peppered” in sewers. The sun is only a “nickel in the sky.” The protagonist’s breasts are little birds. Lamps “wiggle like water when the sun is standing straight in the sky.” Lock demonstrates a keenness for bringing the inanimate to life, that can be, at its best, reminiscent of Rilke. The fresh language that Lock employs makes reading it more akin to lyric poetry than novel.”
Jesse Tangen-Mills
fiction
The King of Sweden by Norman Lock
Just as short stories came with the advent of the newspaper, so comes flash fiction, with what appears to be the permanence of internet publications. As in the past, this new genre comes with its stars, among them is Norman Lock. His oeuvre includes a series of imaginary operas written in prose, as they might have been composed by eccentric American composer Joseph Cornell, a book of metaphysical calculations that in a few sentences try to capture the universe’s totality, even a minimalist rendering of the Grimm Tales, each tale condensed to just a few sentences (available for free download as an eBook).
His most recent novel, The King of Sweden, however, relies on a much simpler plot. Somewhere in the rural United States a young girl, traumatized by the death of her mother, confused with the abandonment of her father, shortly thereafter, and is sent to an insane asylum thanks to her boyfriend, Jake, who she lovingly calls the King of Sweden. The female protagonist, a rustic with a peculiar innocence, could easily fall into the Faulknerian idiot man-child mould, but doesn’t. Rather than being dumbfounded, she’s invigorated by the natural world around her. And thanks to Lock’s poetry, so are we. Snow is “peppered” in sewers. The sun is only a “nickel in the sky.” The protagonist’s breasts are little birds. Lamps “wiggle like water when the sun is standing straight in the sky.” Lock demonstrates a keenness for bringing the inanimate to life, that can be, at its best, reminiscent of Rilke. The fresh language that Lock employs makes reading it more akin to lyric poetry than novel.
Although the plights of American rural poor have been described a thousand times over again, the cadences and descriptions of this rural America feel new. Her lover, Jake, the “King of Sweden,” tells her that her naked back “is like a river.” Even the title’s obscure allusion to a Cab Calloway’s song, that should place us somewhere in the forties, instead denies us any real certainty. We wonder, is Jake really from Sweden? He knows things about Sweden that someone from the rural poor in the 1940s wouldn’t. He has blonde hair. Like a tempered Beckett, Lock avoids the usual markers of time and place, while concentrating on the universality of detail: “crickets make a rusty noise in the grass” or “the sun is white and small in their empty branches.” Only towards the end of the novel does the story reveal the protagonists’ age and the year. She’s thirty-six and it’s 1958 when the story ends. Six of her last years have been spent in an insane asylum, after she murdered her baby, and there are few signs of the once charming “King of Sweden.” It seems that the displacement of time and place keeps the novel from petering off into melodrama.
Unfortunately, as with many of the minimalist pioneers like Amy Hepel, Gordon Lish, and Diane Williams, Lock’s prose occasionally stifles the reader with intended monotony (as is life, we’re to think). Lock writes: “Whiskey’s pretty when the light shines through. I slosh it round inside the bottle and see the yard flood beneath a golden wave. I twist the cork out and swallow some. It burns.” This sort of stop and go can be tiring, but the idiosyncratic narration gives the novel enough dynamic momentum to avoid dullness.
In many ways, this is a bildungsroman. The dovish country bumpkin, that had imagined her fling a king, kills her baby, becomes the murderer of her own child. Despite her naïve natural observations, reality infects her, perhaps starting with her mother who ambiguously tells her “It wasn’t to be,” just before dying. Then she paints the pain and frustration onto her own child, wondering, “Does he see God burnt black as mud in a singed coat?” before performing infanticide. Once in the insane asylum her delightful observations, her dark musing and post coitus cozies are traded for “the man with the crooked teeth” who brutally bathes her, and optimistic fantasies filtered through a cell window.
As with his other works, Lock’s delivers flashy slices of thought that one can scroll through. His poetic punch line-narratives read perfectly on screen. This could in part due to the author’s playwright background (he had a play in the Edinburgh Theater Festival in 1996). Words move action and vice versa, while still maintaining enough stillness to do nothing, to use Auden’s famous description of poetry. However, unlike Lock’s other works this novel is being sold only in paperback version. This may have to do with the writer’s distaste for electronic publishing, having once said, “Electricity is evanescent; paper and ink give to the thing made permanence, which is, I am aware, illusory." Still, one wonders given recent trends, how permanent paper will really be, even more so with the presence of brilliant miniaturist authors, like this one.
The King of Sweden by Norman Lock
Ravenna Press
ISBN: 098221152X
154 Pages
This is a great book review, mainly because it uses a great sense of style. The author uses proper language to describe briefly, but to the point the plot of this book. We can see this in the first lines, “Somewhere in the rural United States a young girl, traumatized by the death of her mother, confused with the abandonment of her father, shortly thereafter, and is sent to an insane asylum thanks to her boyfriend, Jake, who she lovingly calls the King of Sweden.” He does not write in any ordinary way, he engages the reader to create curiosity to find out what happens. While describing the book the author is very clear stating each idea thoroughly, clearing any doubts. As he uses parts of the book and quotes he uses a great amount of vividness, therefore making a mental image in the readers mind. I could picture this crazy insane girl and then killing her own baby. “Despite her naïve natural observations, reality infects her, perhaps starting with her mother who ambiguously tells her “It wasn’t to be,” just before dying. Then she paints the pain and frustration onto her own child, wondering, “Does he see God burnt black as mud in a singed coat?” before performing infanticide.” The author of this review uses decorum throughout, he “fits in” with the reader. He doesn’t use exotic vocabulary but uses very eloquent words to express his point.
The author goes beyond just telling the plot, he shows his analytical side and opinion, when he talks about Lock and how the poetry helps develop the book. This quote really got me thinking, “And thanks to Lock’s poetry, so are we. Snow is “peppered” in sewers. The sun is only a “nickel in the sky.” The protagonist’s breasts are little birds. Lamps “wiggle like water when the sun is standing straight in the sky.” Lock demonstrates a keenness for bringing the inanimate to life, that can be, at its best, reminiscent of Rilke. The fresh language that Lock employs makes reading it more akin to lyric poetry than novel.”
Words To Know
“A terrorist group had kidnapped Patty Hearst, a young newspaper heiress.”
Heiress: Female heir. Female who is entitled by law or by the terms of a will to inherit the estate of another.
“Their twelve-gauge shotguns served as a good deterrent.”
Deterrent: To prevent or discourage from acting, as by means of fear or doubt.
“The inmate would be granted a onetime only conjugal visit.”
Conjugal: of or relating to marriage or to the relationship between a wife and husband.
“When I was called from the bullpen the second time, I was handed a document tittled Inmate Outdates.”
Inmate Outdates: earliest release days granted by a parole.
"And the girls didnt mind all the foreplay they were getting in the visiting room."
Foreplay:mutual sexual fondling prior to sexual intercourse
Unexpected Racism: Blacks Take Control
As I proceed into reading this book, I have found a pattern of racism. Not only do we see, the usual black discrimination, but white as well. In fact since in the jails of Detroit there is a greater black population, the author is treated, looked at, and humiliated among many other racist acts, because he is white. Here we can see how a black guy refers to him when he gets in the prison, “Stupid ass white boy. Ain’t you seen a cockroach before?” He probably wouldn’t have said this to another black person but since he was one of the very few whites, he decided to pick on him no matter what. He found any little excuse to show his hatred and anger. Yet, the author was also racist maybe not directly, but as the book displays his thoughts are racist, “He was enormous in size, well over six feet six, and his skin was so dark it almost looked purple.” He is too scared to say any racist comment back to this guy, but He would if he could, yet he is intimidated by him.
There is a scene where they are all in prison and the author describes a fight a white man has with some blacks. Here we can see all the racism and what divides the black from whites and the majority from the minority. I have not read something with so much hate packed together, “It was used like nigger or coon, pock monkeys, and spooks, except peckerwood was blacks called whites, along with honky and rednecks, crackers and ghosts. But on that side of the bars, only blacks spoke those words aloud.” This not only shows discrimination between the two groups, but how the majority has the power and the minority the white are afraid of the blacks.
There is a scene where they are all in prison and the author describes a fight a white man has with some blacks. Here we can see all the racism and what divides the black from whites and the majority from the minority. I have not read something with so much hate packed together, “It was used like nigger or coon, pock monkeys, and spooks, except peckerwood was blacks called whites, along with honky and rednecks, crackers and ghosts. But on that side of the bars, only blacks spoke those words aloud.” This not only shows discrimination between the two groups, but how the majority has the power and the minority the white are afraid of the blacks.
viernes, 9 de octubre de 2009
jueves, 8 de octubre de 2009
The Truth Behind Standarized Tests
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
September 28, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Reading Incomprehension
By TODD FARLEY
LAST week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan acknowledged standardized tests are flawed measures of student progress. But the problem is not so much the tests themselves — it’s the people scoring them.
Many people remember those tests as lots of multiple-choice questions answered by marking bubbles with a No. 2 pencil, but today’s exams nearly always include the sort of “open ended” items where students fill up the blank pages of a test booklet with their own thoughts and words. On many tests today, a good number of points come from such open-ended items, and that’s where the real trouble begins.
Multiple-choice items are scored by machines, but open-ended items are scored by subjective humans who are prone to errors. I know because I was one of them. In 1994, I was a graduate student looking for part-time work. After a five-minute interview I got the job of scoring fourth-grade, state-wide reading comprehension tests. The for-profit testing company that hired me paid almost $8 an hour, not bad money for me at the time.
One of the tests I scored had students read a passage about bicycle safety. They were then instructed to draw a poster that illustrated a rule that was indicated in the text. We would award one point for a poster that included a correct rule and zero for a drawing that did not.
The first poster I saw was a drawing of a young cyclist, a helmet tightly attached to his head, flying his bike over a canal filled with flaming oil, his two arms waving wildly in the air. I stared at the response for minutes. Was this a picture of a helmet-wearing child who understood the basic rules of bike safety? Or was it meant to portray a youngster killing himself on two wheels?
I was not the only one who was confused. Soon several of my fellow scorers — pretty much people off the street, like me — were debating my poster, some positing that it clearly showed an understanding of bike safety while others argued that it most certainly did not. I realized then — an epiphany confirmed over a decade and a half of experience in the testing industry — that the score any student would earn mostly depended on which temporary employee viewed his response.
A few years later, still a part-time worker, I had a similar experience. For one project our huge group spent weeks scoring ninth-grade movie reviews, each of us reading approximately 30 essays an hour (yes, one every two minutes), for eight hours a day, five days a week. At one point the woman beside me asked my opinion about the essay she was reading, a review of the X-rated movie “Debbie Does Dallas.” The woman thought it deserved a 3 (on a 6-point scale), but she settled on that only after weighing the student’s strong writing skills against the “inappropriate” subject matter. I argued the essay should be given a 6, as the comprehensive analysis of the movie was artfully written and also made me laugh my head off.
All of the 100 or so scorers in the room soon became embroiled in the debate. Eventually we came to the “consensus” that the essay deserved a 6 (“genius”), or 4 (well-written but “naughty”), or a zero (“filth”). The essay was ultimately given a zero.
This kind of arbitrary decision is the rule, not the exception. The years I spent assessing open-ended questions convinced me that large-scale assessment was mostly a mad scramble to score tests, meet deadlines and rake in cash.
The cash, though, wasn’t bad. It was largely for this reason that I eventually became a project director for a private testing company. The scoring standards were still bleak. A couple of years ago I supervised a statewide reading assessment test. My colleague and I were relaxing at a pool because we believed we’d already finished scoring all of the tens of thousands of student responses. Then a call from the home office informed us that a couple of dozen unscored tests had been discovered.
Because our company’s deadline for returning the tests was that day, my colleague and I had to score them even though we were already well into happy hour. We spent the evening listening to a squeaky-voiced secretary read student answers to us over a scratchy speakerphone line, while we made decisions that could affect somebody’s future.
These are the kinds of tests, after all, that can help determine government financing for schools. There is already much debate over whether the progress that Secretary Duncan hopes to measure can be determined by standardized testing at all. But in the meantime, we can give more thought to who scores these tests. We could start by requiring that scoring be done only by professionals who have made a commitment to education — rather than by people like me.
Todd Farley is the author of the forthcoming “Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry.”
As I am getting ready to apply to universities, I was shocked after reading this op-ed. I always thought that short response and essay questions weren’t that accurate, but I never thought they would be so of. After thinking about it I can believe it, I mean we are all different and as the article says “the problem is not so much the tests themselves — it’s the people scoring them.” After all standardized multiple choice questions, are scored by a machine and there is a right or wrong answer, writing is according to the person who reads your paper. This statement says it all, “but open-ended items are scored by subjective humans who are prone to errors.”
It is their opinion and that is the problem. In the article they cite a perfect example to show the ineffectiveness of this. An essay is like a piece of art, it may appeal many and many may dislike it. So really the grade is subjective to the graders point of view and interests. In other words, “that the score any student would earn mostly depended on which temporary employee viewed his response.”
Here is a specific example that happened, “At one point the woman beside me asked my opinion about the essay she was reading, a review of the X-rated movie “Debbie Does Dallas.” The woman thought it deserved a 3 (on a 6-point scale), but she settled on that only after weighing the student’s strong writing skills against the “inappropriate” subject matter. I argued the essay should be given a 6, as the comprehensive analysis of the movie was artfully written and also made me laugh my head off.” The essay was finally given a zero. There were opinions giving the essay each a different grade, so the question was which grade was the one that essay deserved?
I believe something must be done, either more specific benchmarks should be made so everyone is graded equally or simply a replacement of this written parts. For, they are decisions that could affect someone future. This is a serious issue which should be handled sincerely. The test takers deserve to be taken into account and with this measure, we can infer they are not taken seriously. As the op-ed ends with a strong statement many of us don’t know, “We could start by requiring that scoring be done only by professionals who have made a commitment to education — rather than by people like me.” I could have sworn professionals checked these tests, apparently it could be any one, so what criteria will be used to judge your writing is a mystery.
September 28, 2009
Op-Ed Contributor
Reading Incomprehension
By TODD FARLEY
LAST week, Education Secretary Arne Duncan acknowledged standardized tests are flawed measures of student progress. But the problem is not so much the tests themselves — it’s the people scoring them.
Many people remember those tests as lots of multiple-choice questions answered by marking bubbles with a No. 2 pencil, but today’s exams nearly always include the sort of “open ended” items where students fill up the blank pages of a test booklet with their own thoughts and words. On many tests today, a good number of points come from such open-ended items, and that’s where the real trouble begins.
Multiple-choice items are scored by machines, but open-ended items are scored by subjective humans who are prone to errors. I know because I was one of them. In 1994, I was a graduate student looking for part-time work. After a five-minute interview I got the job of scoring fourth-grade, state-wide reading comprehension tests. The for-profit testing company that hired me paid almost $8 an hour, not bad money for me at the time.
One of the tests I scored had students read a passage about bicycle safety. They were then instructed to draw a poster that illustrated a rule that was indicated in the text. We would award one point for a poster that included a correct rule and zero for a drawing that did not.
The first poster I saw was a drawing of a young cyclist, a helmet tightly attached to his head, flying his bike over a canal filled with flaming oil, his two arms waving wildly in the air. I stared at the response for minutes. Was this a picture of a helmet-wearing child who understood the basic rules of bike safety? Or was it meant to portray a youngster killing himself on two wheels?
I was not the only one who was confused. Soon several of my fellow scorers — pretty much people off the street, like me — were debating my poster, some positing that it clearly showed an understanding of bike safety while others argued that it most certainly did not. I realized then — an epiphany confirmed over a decade and a half of experience in the testing industry — that the score any student would earn mostly depended on which temporary employee viewed his response.
A few years later, still a part-time worker, I had a similar experience. For one project our huge group spent weeks scoring ninth-grade movie reviews, each of us reading approximately 30 essays an hour (yes, one every two minutes), for eight hours a day, five days a week. At one point the woman beside me asked my opinion about the essay she was reading, a review of the X-rated movie “Debbie Does Dallas.” The woman thought it deserved a 3 (on a 6-point scale), but she settled on that only after weighing the student’s strong writing skills against the “inappropriate” subject matter. I argued the essay should be given a 6, as the comprehensive analysis of the movie was artfully written and also made me laugh my head off.
All of the 100 or so scorers in the room soon became embroiled in the debate. Eventually we came to the “consensus” that the essay deserved a 6 (“genius”), or 4 (well-written but “naughty”), or a zero (“filth”). The essay was ultimately given a zero.
This kind of arbitrary decision is the rule, not the exception. The years I spent assessing open-ended questions convinced me that large-scale assessment was mostly a mad scramble to score tests, meet deadlines and rake in cash.
The cash, though, wasn’t bad. It was largely for this reason that I eventually became a project director for a private testing company. The scoring standards were still bleak. A couple of years ago I supervised a statewide reading assessment test. My colleague and I were relaxing at a pool because we believed we’d already finished scoring all of the tens of thousands of student responses. Then a call from the home office informed us that a couple of dozen unscored tests had been discovered.
Because our company’s deadline for returning the tests was that day, my colleague and I had to score them even though we were already well into happy hour. We spent the evening listening to a squeaky-voiced secretary read student answers to us over a scratchy speakerphone line, while we made decisions that could affect somebody’s future.
These are the kinds of tests, after all, that can help determine government financing for schools. There is already much debate over whether the progress that Secretary Duncan hopes to measure can be determined by standardized testing at all. But in the meantime, we can give more thought to who scores these tests. We could start by requiring that scoring be done only by professionals who have made a commitment to education — rather than by people like me.
Todd Farley is the author of the forthcoming “Making the Grades: My Misadventures in the Standardized Testing Industry.”
As I am getting ready to apply to universities, I was shocked after reading this op-ed. I always thought that short response and essay questions weren’t that accurate, but I never thought they would be so of. After thinking about it I can believe it, I mean we are all different and as the article says “the problem is not so much the tests themselves — it’s the people scoring them.” After all standardized multiple choice questions, are scored by a machine and there is a right or wrong answer, writing is according to the person who reads your paper. This statement says it all, “but open-ended items are scored by subjective humans who are prone to errors.”
It is their opinion and that is the problem. In the article they cite a perfect example to show the ineffectiveness of this. An essay is like a piece of art, it may appeal many and many may dislike it. So really the grade is subjective to the graders point of view and interests. In other words, “that the score any student would earn mostly depended on which temporary employee viewed his response.”
Here is a specific example that happened, “At one point the woman beside me asked my opinion about the essay she was reading, a review of the X-rated movie “Debbie Does Dallas.” The woman thought it deserved a 3 (on a 6-point scale), but she settled on that only after weighing the student’s strong writing skills against the “inappropriate” subject matter. I argued the essay should be given a 6, as the comprehensive analysis of the movie was artfully written and also made me laugh my head off.” The essay was finally given a zero. There were opinions giving the essay each a different grade, so the question was which grade was the one that essay deserved?
I believe something must be done, either more specific benchmarks should be made so everyone is graded equally or simply a replacement of this written parts. For, they are decisions that could affect someone future. This is a serious issue which should be handled sincerely. The test takers deserve to be taken into account and with this measure, we can infer they are not taken seriously. As the op-ed ends with a strong statement many of us don’t know, “We could start by requiring that scoring be done only by professionals who have made a commitment to education — rather than by people like me.” I could have sworn professionals checked these tests, apparently it could be any one, so what criteria will be used to judge your writing is a mystery.
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