In addition to the humorous images on Jim’s blog, six months ago, which Christy mentioned in the comments to the previous entry, I found the actual post I remembered.
I didn’t post it here, I just saw it on Nobody’s blog. It was July of 2005, which explains my lapse of memory. Unfortunately, the link is to a dead site, and while it’s on Archive.org, the images naturally aren’t archived. And that of course makes the archive of this particular page pretty worthless. With a little search I found it duplicated here
Since I have absolutely no faith in that remaining there…
It’s much harder to tell a wrong answer in fields outside of math and science. Hence, we ought to pay those who grade, say, political science exams far more than what we pay those who grade math-science exams — for the extra effort that must, per implication, be expended in processing words into some coherence of a thought.
On the other hand, I’ve heard PS TAs say, “You learn to recognize bullshit in this field, because you have the masters to study, the big-name honcho professors and their honorable deceased predecessors. Anything that sounds like their bullshit is good bullshit — and the rest haven’t got a whiff of a clue of the proper bullshit to put down, as responses (where are never the same as answers) to our exam questions and essay requests.”
Or, to change the metaphor, quack like a duck when you fly with the ducks, waddle and swim and fly, as well — because they’re only hunting for ducks. It takes a duck to know a duck, carnally or otherwise..
For the difficulties of exam answers, in other fields, this set of clips may provide some hint of the terrible complexities into which can thought can venture. Please see: http://youtube.com/watch?v=xrShK-NVMIU.
Geography problems: Where is Iraq?
http://www.cnn.com/2006/EDUCATION/05/02/geog.test/
Study: Geography Greek to young Americans
Thursday, May 4, 2006; Posted: 9:44 a.m. EDT (13:44 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) — After more than three years of combat and nearly 2,400 U.S. military deaths in Iraq, nearly two-thirds of Americans aged 18 to 24 still cannot find Iraq on a map, a study released Tuesday showed.
I took the geography test on the CNN page. 6/6 at Beginner level. Intermediate and Advanced were a little more difficult. I will say I got 3/5 on Advanced, and I will be duly impressed with anyone who beats that.