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    Joined: Jul 2011
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    Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
    I play it like a game, though, and don't worry about "truth" in the conventional sense. I've always just looked for the best answer and not gotten hung up on the right one. wink It's like playing Jeopardy or Trivial Pursuit or something-- it's not a test-- it's a GAME.

    I think it's important to consider the target audience for every test. When you read each question, you put it through a filter that makes it simple enough for the target audience to understand. As others have noted, these multiple choice tests aren't about thinking deeply, they are about quickly applying knowledge and understanding within the grasp of the target audience, and doing so reliably.

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    Dad 22:

    Thanks for your help

    That is an excellent point. I think this relates back to the misconceptions on gifted individuals.

    I read somewhehere else that these tests relate best to preparation rather than intelligence. Knowledge of the test itself carries much weight, of course.

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    Originally Posted by Val
    So while one can talk about differences between individual schools and teachers in France, the system is the same everywhere, and I can compare it. smile


    Hmmmm...

    Granted, my experience of the US school system is limited to one school, one district, one state, and doesn't go above 3rd grade yet, but I still think you have too rosy a picture of the uniformity of education in the French system. And that's a system I have 20 years of experience with as a student wink

    There are bad teachers there, and good ones, and OK ones. The curriculum is the same (and that includes public and most private schools) but the textbooks are not, and implementation of that curriculum can be seriously diluted depending on the demographics of the school you attend.

    So... IMO, not so different from CA public school and state mandated curriculum here. Even before Common Core. So far my kids have had better luck in teachers than I did at their age.

    The curriculum might be slightly more demanding here in early grades, slightly more there by the end of high school (discounting AP classes). But you have to understand that by high school the lowest performing students will have been tracked completely out of the system.

    I see some pluses to the French system -- less reliance on the tricks of standardized testing (to loop back to the subject of this thread) is one. Proper (ahem!) funding is another: no bake sales needed.

    There are boatloads of cons to go with them, and some you will have had no experience with whatsoever at a private school in the US. Parental input is completely unwelcome, for a start. You drop your child at the gate in the morning, pick her up in the evening, and that's it. Unless your child is raising hell in the classroom and you are summoned to school there is no talking to the principal either.

    And in this venue... Consider a school system where schools throughout the whole country are supposed to go in lockstep. Now picture a GT, special needs, or (shudder!) 2E kid thrown in. And weep. Differentiation? GT programs? Dream on!

    Not that I am bitter about it or anything...

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    Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
    well. You read Val's link, yes?

    Which one? wink
    I was familiar with the US testing references, and the Irish stuff is very similar to questions for the French baccalaureat.

    I have found Jed Applerouth's experience hilarious, definitely not one of the pitfalls of the French system. Where the issue might be more that you think Rousseau was a pompous, hypocritical windbag, and you get your French/philosophy baccalaureat essay excoriating his morals, intelligence, and writing abilities corrected by a teacher who believes him to be the greatest thinker in the history of humanity. That's when lack of concern for actual content is something to yearn for wink

    Ahem... not that I would know from personal experience, or anything...

    I find both systems frustrating, for different reasons. I do have a list of things I need to make sure my kids learn where I find the US system sorely lacking.

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    We don't use muliple choice as much here either. When I have had to do them I find the best thing is to go fast and try not to think too much. I also use the answer without looking then look technique as much as I can but I have had multi choice tests that I didn't know the content of in advance (job interviews etc).

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    LOL SiasL-- my daughter wrote just such an essay about Thoreau, actually. Her conclusion was that such people OUGHT to be jailed, and not just for tax evasion. Well, not "jail" per se. A Dickensian workhouse would do quite nicely. Also-- that if she had written the derivative work The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, it would have had a very different ending.

    Maybe with him helping Muir break trail somewhere in the high Sierra, or something. Heehee. She figured that Thoreau was the product of an upbringing that clearly didn't include enough genuine privation or hard labor.


    Oh, and everyone knows that Moliere was far superior to Rousseau in the thinking department. grin



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    thanks for all of your feedback--

    BTW, why do you view Moliere to be superior to Rousseau?

    I will grant that he was a formidable playright.

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    I'm a fan of social satire. The more obnoxious and edgy the better-- and to do it as performance art simultaneously is just... sort of.... delicious. In the ironic sense, I mean.


    But really, my point was that it's all down to personal preference at any rate. Which was, at least I think, probably what SiasL's essay was most emphatically intended to point out to start with. wink






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    Well, not completely a matter of taste. On the morals part I never understood why we were asked to drink up the theories on education of a man who abandoned his own children. The sexism was just the icing on the cake.

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