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Comment by fennecfoxen | Hacker News Reader

Blah blah blah blah. "To avoid crushing the glass slide when focusing, begin with the microscope close to the specimen and then gradually back off to focus." Blah blah blah blah.

Utterly incomprehensible!

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And you know what? I'll tell you why people get this wrong. It's because their brains turn off. They say "omg microscopes scary! big block of text!" and guess at answers instead of actually bothering to try and read the text. That's one reason why they get poor scores at reading comprehension: a lack of reading with intent to comprehend. Heck, if they're pressed for time and the guessing-wrong penalty is low enough, it's an entirely rational response.

The fact that the journalist is that dense is mostly a symptom of "oh hey I've found an argument against standardized testing to fit my preexisting conceptions of the matter! Screw reading it, it looks complicated, I'll just use it to justify things." Same basic problem.

>It's because their brains turn off. They say "omg microscopes scary! big block of text!"

s/microscope/computer and you have the cause of an average Helpdesk's stress...

ed. Downvotes? Really? Nobody has ever struggled with a problem which could be solved if the help-ee has bothered to read the text on their screen?

Yes. My mom said "Now what do I do?" when there was a box on her screen that said "Click Next to Continue" and that's all that could be done. I've been trying to teach her to read the boxes that come up before she calls me for help.

On the other hand, when she doesn't call me for help, she ends up printing off a picture from a webpage and scanning it back in to get it into a power point presentation. That's better than giving up on the problem, I guess.

This is why I think the time limit on such tests should be eliminated. For many well-paying occupations, correctness is far more important than speed.

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