So, anyone else every frustrated by people who are somewhat illogical?
We have been administering a reading assessment at my school. Students read a passage aloud, and then answer eight questions. If they get a question wrong, they drop from independent reading ability to instructional, so each question (especially getting one wrong) is pretty key.
So; the kids had to read a passage about ancient Egypt and the Nile. One segment of one paragraph talked about the papyrus plant, and that it was important to the Egyptians because they used it to make paper and keep records.
One of the questions (which could be either explicitly answered from the text or you have to deduce an answer from the text) was...
"How do we know that the Egyptians were a literate people?"
There have been two answers coming up.
First, the "wrong answer" which I tend to think is correct... because archeologists have found artifacts, including hieroglyphs, that indicate they wrote.
Second, the "right answer" according to the teachers that say I am being stubborn... because Egyptians used papyrus to make paper.
I tried to explain that making paper does not, in any way, prove that the Egyptians were literate... it just proves that they made paper. I tried to explain that kids who were giving answer #1 were, in fact, making connections between the text and prior knowledge, which we teach constantly. "Nope," a few teachers said with smug expressions "That answer is not in the text. They need to get the answer from the text."
Except, of course, in the implicit question section.
Sometimes it drives me nuts working with a group of fairly illogical people. And to top it off; there are questions like this on EVERY reading sample... ones that logically do not actually make sense, and despite the fact that I have pointed out that the assessment is flawed (in fact, 90 percent of students scored higher on the 6th grade test than the 5th grade, which should almost IMMEDIATELY prove there is a problem but no, no one seems to get why this is an issue...) everyone just says "Just do it and stop complaining."
Heaven forbid we try to ensure that our assessments actually... you know, assess?
Anyone else ever find themselves frustrated by this sort of thing?