Re: Racial Differences in Intelligence

From: Wolf Kirchmeir (wwolfkir_at_sympatico.ca)
Date: 01/25/05 

Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 20:14:56 -0500

P.Comm wrote:
[...]
> Here is a question for the Cinderella story: What message does this
> Cinderalla story give to people who live in poverty or bad conditions?
> (considering almost every kid was VERY familiar with poverty, all of us
> immigrants or just born here - this was valid) That they can PRAY for some
> miracle and some rich prince or maybe God will SAVE them? Is the message in
> Cinderella a good message or a bad one - explain why. THAT is the kind of
> stuff they gave us on tests; not multiple choice questions about details in
> the stories. [...]

Like I said, you have a different vocabulary. What you cite are
questions for class discussion, homework, essays -- and for exams. Not
for tests. Tests don't count for very much, actually. The more narrowly
focusssed a test is, the more valid the results.

I would test a student's ability to comprehend a story by providing a
story to be read for the test/exam, perhaps ahead of time, perhaps not
(in which latter case, the exam timing has to allow for reading the
story.) Those kinds of questions would be asked about a story that had
_not_ been read in class, IOW. Or, you ask questions that didn't come up
in the class work.

NB that recall is not correlated with ability to analyse a story,
especially when under stress (as in an exam.) I always detested those
instructors who refused to give even a hint of clue as to what facts of
the story they had in mind when the framed their discussion questions.
(Even you can't remember certain details about To Build A Fire. Neither
can I, for that matter, and I dealt with it at for at least a dozen years.)

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