Some Thoughts on Testing

The house needs to have old galvanized pipes replaced, so I have four different plumbers come and give estimates.  Each looks over the job and points out different issues, and, eventually, they all offer slightly different quotes.  None of these are so high or so low as to knock a company out of consideration.  So, unlike the stereotypical exam problem with its A,B,C, or D, there is no right answer.  Probably, any of the plumbers could do the job satisfactorily.

            This, to me, highlights one problem with school testing, particularly the end of the year exams that most school systems institute in the third grade.  They suggest questions have one right answer.  Most of us know this usually isn’t true, we say it isn’t true, but, again and again, we insist students act as if it is.

I wonder if this is why, as a college teacher, I increasingly see in some students an unwillingness, or at least a hesitation, to tackle open-ended questions.  Is the clichéd “What do you want?” more pronounced because they have been taught by the mechanics of the system that there is a “right” choice? Furthermore, there seems to be a reluctance to pursue a subject once they think they have the answer.  They "research" until they have enough quotations or points they think they need for support rather until they understand the topic.  It’s a rational response.  If you know it’s B, why spend time and energy to find out more about the issue?  Move on to the next hoop, the next obligation.

            Before deciding on a plumber, my wife and I discussed the quotes. We also talked to our neighbors and other people.  We got on-line and googled.  We sought advice and information.  This is how most people work, and this is another problem with testing.  Supposedly Einstein was once teased for not knowing his phone number.  Why, he asked, should I memorize something I can look up? What you know is not nearly as important as how you find something out.  If there must be a test, it should be one where the student don’t know the answers and must find them out.  We would learn much more about their capabilities.

            My wife and I talked to people because we learn from one another.  Education is a collaborative effort.  Every professional I know from the mechanic to the surgeon talks things out with colleagues.  We ask questions, we get advice, we tell anecdotes and stories.  If my doctor wants to consult with someone on my condition, that’s not cheating.  Testing, however, isolates people and says, “you’re on your own," but that's not how we actually work.  

            Finally, what did my wife and I do as we talked about the quotes?  We walked around the house and the yard.  We walked through the neighborhood.  Moving and thinking are connected.  Put me in a room and tell me I can’t leave my seat, and my primary desire becomes getting away, a desire that distorts my responses.

            Mark Twain once said, “I have never let schooling interfere with my education.”  Testing, not only has little to do with education, it often is antithetical to it.

The Title of This Blog

A confession.  I never was comfortable with the original title of this blog – “Icing and Ink.”  It was close to what I wanted, but it wasn't quite right.  I chose it because I knew that I was going to post about writing and books -- "Ink.”  I also thought I would write about baked goods – “Icing.”  And, to me, these two are related.  I remember eating an almond pastry in Marseilles, and it was a revelation.  There was a thin thread of chocolate in the middle.  Not a chunk.  Not chips.  Just a thread.  And I realized, "That's art."  When I got back to the States and saw a "chocolate croissant" with huge blobs of chocolate pushing out each end advertising its presence, I thought, "That's not art.  That's sales."

            Baked goods have often seemed to me to be both a literal and metaphorical artistic practice.  I’m not the only one who feels this way.  The writer Dawn Powell once suggested the plots of her novels were simply the flour keeping the whole together, a delivery system for the raisins and sugar.  And there are similar therapeutic qualities to writing, art-making, and baking.  A recent BBC article suggested baking combats depression:  “Can Baking Make You Happier?”

However, the blog title seemed too cute and not particularly informative.  As it became clear this blog might be a long-term project, I needed one that I liked better.  (It’s always bothered me that Charles Schulz disliked the title “Peanuts.”  He found it “"totally ridiculous” and felt it had “no meaning.”  He had originally called the strip “Little Folks,” but his syndicate changed it.)

 So, for those who haven't noticed already, I've retitled this blog.  It will continue to do what it does; consider issues involved in writing, teaching, reading, etc.  There probably will even be entries on donuts and cookies.  The content won’t change because I’m interested in the process of making things, but the title recognizes that attention takes practice.  It’s an activity that requires focus and active commitment.  Writing this blog is one way that I encourage/force/get myself to do it.

(Undead) Bodies of Work

           In They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, couples participating in a dance marathon must also run a “rally” each night which is a ten minute sprint.  The ones who come in last are eliminated.  The director of the film version, Sydney Pollack, makes the marathon a metaphor for life.  You try to endure as it goes on and on and on.

Sometimes this seems an apt metaphor for writing as well.  Long periods of tedious grueling activity that often seems aimless, interspersed with frantic sprints that get the crowd cheering, but leave you exhausted.

            At one point in the film, Gloria (Jane Fonda) is partnered with Sailor (Red Buttons).  During a rally sprint, he has a heart attack.  To ensure they won’t be last and eliminated, she puts him on her back and drags him.   Afterwards she realizes he’s dead, and she has been hauling a body around.

            This is how I came to regard a novel I was working on.  I created the first file for it in 2003.  At one point it was alive, but as we trudged through the years in a marathon of our own, eventually I came to suspect it had died, and that I was dragging it.  Hampered by this body, I was unable to pair up with any other project.  So, last year I finally decide to drop it and walk away. 

The decision was liberating.  I could move.  I could think.  I was no longer oppressed by this great weight.  I didn’t feel the need to explain my lack of progress  or talk about “the novel”  I started planning other projects:  another collection of poetry, a book of short fiction.

            Then, earlier this summer, I heard a familiar voice.  I ignored it, but it grew stronger.  My buried protagonist.  Then I had some thoughts about the manuscript.  I ignored them.  But they kept coming.

            Writers, perhaps inevitably, often see the world in terms of metaphors and narratives.  I had been thinking I was in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They, but maybe I was in a different story.  Maybe . . . it was alive.  Or trying to be alive.

            Some manuscripts are zombies.  You can abandon them, bury them in drawers, and then, suddenly, they come lurching forward, demanding your attending, demanding you face them.  They won’t leave you alone.  They keep coming even as you recognize that they’re grotesque, deformed, rotting.

            And, sometimes, because of a trick of the light or a delusion, you even think, “I can fix them.  I know what’s wrong.  I have an antidote.  Just more time in the lab.”  Yet this is never how the story goes.  I spent part of the summer hoping that maybe parts of the manuscript were still viable.  That I could remove them, and they would function on their own or I could somehow transplant them.  I was wrong.

As summer ends, I realize that I should have ran away, buried the manuscript again, somehow finished it off once and for all, and turned my attention to something else.  It took time and energy and mental space and resulted in . .  . nothing.

Whatever story I’m in.  It doesn’t seem to have a happy ending, or, worse, any kind of ending or resolution at all.  It may need a better hero; certainly it needs a better writer.

Summer Break

This blog will be on summer hiatus until mid-August as I spend as much time as possible around, in, and on water.

Poet Matt Mason Answers Some Questions

Matt Mason lives and works and loves and reads and does all kinds of things in Nebraska.  The author of several books, including Things We Don't Know We Don't Know, he is currently on a world tour for The Baby That Ate Cincinnati.

How would you describe what you do?


I run a literary nonprofit, meaning I answer emails from the point I wake up to the point I go to sleep; some days, though, I go to work at my higher paying job for my sister's videophotography company where I hold a fuzzy boom mic above people like Warren Buffett; when not doing either, I wrangle my two children as my wife also works, teaching a few classes at a university and teaching workshops in schools; I also coordinate Nebraska's Poetry Out Loud Program, am festival director for the Nebraska Book Festival and the Louder Than a Bomb: Omaha Youth Poetry Festival. And I think I wrote a poem a couple weeks ago.

Is this different than what other people think you do?


I don't know what other people think I do. You should have a blog where you just interview friends of poets about what they think their friend does. My suspicion is that people think I write more and that, perhaps, I have a nice smoking jacket.

How do you know if you’re on the right track with a project?


Maybe a couple years after it's published. Though I still second guess "Mistranslating Neruda," which I published more than 10 years ago. My newest book... I suspect I was on the right track but the internal jury's still out on some of the details.

How do you go about making choices?


By trusting my instincts more than my brain.

How do you know when you’re done?


I suspect I will be 100% sure right around the moment I cease to be classified as "alive."

What’s your workspace like?


Any place with wifi, Diet Coke on fountain and free refills is (i.e. McDonald's).

What are your essential tools?


Pen and a notebook.

What’s the most surprising tool you use?


Perhaps that would be the pop station at McDonald's where I refill with Diet Coke 3-4 times while, umm, in my office hours.

What was your biggest mistake or the one you learned the most from?


This might prove to be the Diet Coke, if internet health articles can be believed. Otherwise, what I learned the most from was when I was in college and stopped worrying about if what I was writing was poetry. Before then, I was worried about what poetry was and if I was writing it, I ended up writing what I wished poetry was rather than what it seemed to look like.

What’s the worst piece of advice you’ve ever been given?


"Dave's Insanity Sauce is good on spaghetti."

What’s the best?


"Try the chocolate croissant."

More about Matt and his work at:

http://matt.midverse.com/

On Discovering Words

When I was in graduate school, my roommate’s father came to visit.  We were in the middle of moving out of a house that we had been renting.  As we cleaned it up, packing boxes and mopping the floors, he sat on a bar stool and read entries from a dictionary out loud.  At the time, I found the behavior inexplicable.  Just another part of being a goofy old guy  And yet he was clearly fascinated by what he was finding and that made us interested as well.

As so often happens in my life, now I understand.  At some point, I began using the dictionary as more than a spell-checker, and I found it contained amazing information.  Meanings. Etymologies.  Odd juxtapositions.  And, as the poet said, “way leads on to way.”  One word leads to another.  Now, I sometimes find myself doing the same thing my friend’s father did, occasionally looking up a word and then looking up another word and then randomly browsing the dictionary and even reading it out loud to others (usually my poor captive students).  There is a pleasure in learning what words mean, and used to mean, and sharing the information.  A dictionary is like a Field Guide to Language.

Someone once told me that he couldn’t write poetry because he didn’t have a big enough vocabulary.  He didn’t have the words.  I explained that I didn’t have the words either, but the poems teach them to me.  I learn them as I need them.

Writing isn’t always an expression of language, sometimes it’s an exploration of language.  You discover the words as you go.