I wish this blog was a multiple choice test

I think it may be a little bit harsh to say that multiple choice testing makes students "not only increasingly incapable but also intolerant of being asked to think in complex ways." Now, it may be true that multiple choice tests are a bit easier on students and teachers than a big essay, but I don't think that multiple choice tests make people stupid, nor should they be removed altogether from curriculum.

As I have expressed during class, I think that multiple choice tests are useful and have their rightful place in the education system, especially in classes that cover a wide range of facts, like biology and psychology. Courses like these don't need many essay questions, since there is only so much you can say about what a white blood cell does, and that sort of knowledge would be impossible to test with essays in a single class period.

At the same time, I can see how multiple choice tests do reduce the amount that a student has to think about a test question. Many of the multiple choice tests that I have taken, I could have quite easily walked in without ever hearing the material being tested, and still done very well on the test. On multiple choice tests, you have a pretty good chance of guessing the right answer to start out with, and you can usually eliminate several possible answers with context clues, etymology, or just dumb logic. Occasionally, you get that teacher that likes to be a jokester and will put choices on tests that are simply meant to be funny.

Who can say really what effect multiple choice testing has on our intelligence. I think what we really need is a good balance of different types of testing, and teachers who are competent enough to write good tests. At the end of the day, the choice of which type of test should be used comes down to the teacher and the material.

Gradumacation

So... the graduation rate here at USI... not the best I have ever seen. At 15%, our four year graduation rate seems shockingly low. Our six-year graduation rate is better, at 34%, but still nothing to be proud of. In class, we have talked a lot about our goals for the university, and one of the goals that keeps coming up from us honors kids is for the university to earn more prestige and respect. It's awfully hard to earn respect as an academic institution with stats like that.

Which brings us to this week's discussion question: what can we do to improve these statistics? There is, of course the obvious answer: hike the entrance standards to "cut the riff-raff," but that would have a lot of negative effects on university growth rate, state funding, tuition, etc. The thing is, there are a lot of people who come to this university because they can't make it in to other schools, or because college is what they are "supposed to do." These students aren't very likely to graduate, but they do increase our growth rates and keep tuition down.

So maybe it's not the best idea to up the standards for acceptance. So that leaves us with two other options: either do everything we can to help those students succeed, or do everything we can to attract more high quality students to USI. Or both. Either of those would be great for the university. But the tough part is actually executing them.

DEATH!

I hate technology. I don't understand why it's so difficult to just make technology that works. There's always got to be something that goes wrong. For instance, when I decided at 11:30 Tuesday night that it might be time to start thinking about writing my blog for tomorrow's HONS class, my computer suddenly decided that it either doesn't want to play any Quicktime files or it just really hates public radio, because if refuses absolutely to play the interview that I'm supposed to be listening to. So... that puts me at somewhat of a disadvantage when answering this question. But I'll give it a shot anyway. If need be, I'll add an addendum after I get a chance to listen to the interview.

I knew that it was going to be a good day when I walked into RL 0017 and saw that most of the local bingo club had showed up to hear Jane Brody speak on end of life issues. It turned out to be pretty interesting, and I actually had a pretty lengthy conversation with my father (who attended the lecture) later that day on the topic of death and all his friends (Living wills, funeral plans, cremation, who gets the loot, etc.). We talked about his and Mom's plans and wishes should any situation arise, and he reiterated Ms. Brody's point that it's never too early to start planning for the end of your life.

What struck me most about the talk was the ease and comfort with which Ms. Brody spoke about the taboo subject of death. She described the deaths of most everyone in her family in the same manner that I imagine she would talk about yesterday's weather. Most people don't share her enthusiasm for dying, so it was a little bit odd to hear her talking about it so openly.

The biggest thing that I took away from the lecture is simply that we have to learn to accept that death is a part of life. There is absolutely no way around it. Billions of people have gone before us in death, and they all made it out OK...

In the literally immortal words of Socrates, "To fear death, gentleman, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. For anything that men can tell, death may be the greatest good that can happen to them: but they fear it as if they knew quite well that it was the greatest of evils. And what is this but that shameful ignorance of thinking that we know what we do not know?" (Apology, 32)

Let me start off by asking why there is a moving picture of one of Stephen King's langoliers giving me the bird on the course homepage for our class.

Now that I have that out of my system, let me say that I really enjoyed Dr. Williams' talk the other night. It's always interesting to meet authors after reading their literature, but especially so in this case. Dr. Williams has had such an interesting and tough life, and it does my heart good to see that in spite of it all, he has become a very successful and very good man. There are so many other people who live in situations like he lived through, and many of them simply give up on life, become bitter, start selling drugs, get involved in gangs, et cetera.

There are many people in America today that could and should benefit from Dr. Williams' account of life in America of fifty years ago. People in similar situations need to know that there is hope for their lives, and people who are insulated from these situations need to know that they still exist in the United States and are probably much more prevalent than any one person can know.

Anyway, Dr. Williams did a great job, and I hope that he will continue to tell his story to people that need to hear it.