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General discussionRelease: No Pineapple Left Behind(133 posts)(133 posts)
(133 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted February 18, 2016
A cultivated student is the perfect fertilizer for society's growth. Or something.



<span class="bold">No Pineapple Left Behind</span>, a playful insight into the fruitless methods of modern education management, is available now DRM-free on GOG.com for Windows, Mac, and Linux, with a 10% launch discount.

Do you remember that kid from junior high who reminded you of a pineapple? Always eager to please the teacher, sit quietly through classes, take tests, and compare grades? For a school principal, this is the stuff of dreams. But because life is a cruel hag, he is usually stuck with *human* children instead. Ugh. Well, thankfully, this travesty is finally coming to an end!

See, running a school is no child's play. The little devils are unruly, demanding, unpredictable beings. But pineapples express no desires and exhibit no tendencies towards insubordination. Good grades and unquestionable obedience are profitable for the school, so as a sensible businessman, your job is to turn children into pineapples and not ever let them change back. Some parents may raise concerns and you've also got the teacher's work schedules, the students' curriculums, and the needs of your staff to manage, but with spells like "Trigonomancy" at your disposal, this should be easier than reciting the alphabet. It starts with a "p", right?



Weed out the bothersome students and fill your buzzing classrooms with compliant fruit in the satirical manager/simulation <span class="bold">No Pineapple Left Behind</span>, DRM-free on GOG.com. And if you enjoy the whimsical sound of studious pineapples, make sure to also grab the game's <span class="bold">OST</span>. The 10% launch discount will last until February 25, 4:59 PM GMT.
Posted February 24, 2016
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yogsloth: In my opinion, one of the six questions was weak (#7) because it requires a bit of a logical extension beyond what is explicitly mentioned in the passage. I'd be willing to bet quite a high percentage of test takers got one particular answer. (No spoilers here in case you all want to do it yourselves.) The rest of the questions clearly had one and only one correct answer.
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PaterAlf: I would say that #8 was very weak too, because it depends on what you consider "wise". For me the wisest sentence in the whole nonsensical story was spoken by the hare ("You aren't even an animal! You're a tropical fruit!"), because it was a correct statement and could have ended the race and the debate before the senseless discussion of the other animals even started. But for the test it would've been the wrong answer.
I think this question came to test the understanding of the concept of a story's moral.
As quoted, the moral of the story is "Pineapples don't have sleeves", which is exactly what the owl said.
Not the world's greatest question, but if you submit to the story's intentional "nonsense" logic, it's pretty straightforward, I would say.
Posted February 24, 2016
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mrkgnao: I think this question came to test the understanding of the concept of a story's moral.
As quoted, the moral of the story is "Pineapples don't have sleeves", which is exactly what the owl said.
Not the world's greatest question, but if you submit to the story's intentional "nonsense" logic, it's pretty straightforward, I would say.
Problem is, it's still not question that can clearly be answered. The moral of a story isn't automatically wise. Regarding the context of the story it even was a pretty dumb answer in my eyes, because the owl didn't use it as a metaphor. The sentence was spoken and meant completely literally. It's like saying "I have two hands.". Might be a fact, but it's not extraordinary wise.
Posted February 24, 2016
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mrkgnao: I think this question came to test the understanding of the concept of a story's moral.
As quoted, the moral of the story is "Pineapples don't have sleeves", which is exactly what the owl said.
Not the world's greatest question, but if you submit to the story's intentional "nonsense" logic, it's pretty straightforward, I would say.
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PaterAlf: Problem is, it's still not question that can clearly be answered. The moral of a story isn't automatically wise. Regarding the context of the story it even was a pretty dumb answer in my eyes, because the owl didn't use it as a metaphor. The sentence was spoken and meant completely literally. It's like saying "I have two hands.". Might be a fact, but it's not extraordinary wise.
I would argue that a story's moral is by definition wise.

You're trying to judge the wisdom of a saying based on real world logic. I believe you should not use real world logic here, but the story's logic, which is nonsense logic.

It's a bit like Alice in Wonderland, Chapter IX:

`Very true,' said the Duchess: `flamingoes and mustard both bite. And the moral of that is--"Birds of a feather flock together."'
`Only mustard isn't a bird,' Alice remarked.
`Right, as usual,' said the Duchess: `what a clear way you have of putting things!'
`It's a mineral, I think,' said Alice.
`Of course it is,' said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to everything that Alice said; `there's a large mustard-mine near here. And the moral of that is--"The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours."'

which I consider remarkably wise.
Posted February 24, 2016
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PaterAlf: Problem is, it's still not question that can clearly be answered. The moral of a story isn't automatically wise. Regarding the context of the story it even was a pretty dumb answer in my eyes, because the owl didn't use it as a metaphor. The sentence was spoken and meant completely literally. It's like saying "I have two hands.". Might be a fact, but it's not extraordinary wise.
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mrkgnao: I would argue that a story's moral is by definition wise.

You're trying to judge the wisdom of a saying based on real world logic. I believe you should not use real world logic here, but the story's logic, which is nonsense logic.

It's a bit like Alice in Wonderland, Chapter IX:

`Very true,' said the Duchess: `flamingoes and mustard both bite. And the moral of that is--"Birds of a feather flock together."'
`Only mustard isn't a bird,' Alice remarked.
`Right, as usual,' said the Duchess: `what a clear way you have of putting things!'
`It's a mineral, I think,' said Alice.
`Of course it is,' said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to everything that Alice said; `there's a large mustard-mine near here. And the moral of that is--"The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours."'

which I consider remarkably wise.
I understand that, but that makes the question even more dumb for a test. If you can't use normal world logic, it's up to the children to judge the otherland logic and what they consider the wisest answer.

I wouldn't mind if you would use such a question for a psychological or sociological study, but you can't use it for a test about reading comprehension skills. A valid question would have been: "Which animal spoke the wisest words and why do you think so?".

When you want to know something about reading comprehension skills or logical thinking of young kids, it's often better to not ask closed questions. Using open questions also eliminates the chance that somebody gets a good score by simple guessing (which would be possible with just 11 questions).
Posted February 24, 2016
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PaterAlf: Problem is, it's still not question that can clearly be answered. The moral of a story isn't automatically wise. Regarding the context of the story it even was a pretty dumb answer in my eyes, because the owl didn't use it as a metaphor. The sentence was spoken and meant completely literally. It's like saying "I have two hands.". Might be a fact, but it's not extraordinary wise.
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mrkgnao: I would argue that a story's moral is by definition wise.

You're trying to judge the wisdom of a saying based on real world logic. I believe you should not use real world logic here, but the story's logic, which is nonsense logic.

It's a bit like Alice in Wonderland, Chapter IX:

`Very true,' said the Duchess: `flamingoes and mustard both bite. And the moral of that is--"Birds of a feather flock together."'
`Only mustard isn't a bird,' Alice remarked.
`Right, as usual,' said the Duchess: `what a clear way you have of putting things!'
`It's a mineral, I think,' said Alice.
`Of course it is,' said the Duchess, who seemed ready to agree to everything that Alice said; `there's a large mustard-mine near here. And the moral of that is--"The more there is of mine, the less there is of yours."'

which I consider remarkably wise.
I kind of want to read Alice now, it seems enjoyably crazy.
Posted February 24, 2016
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mrkgnao: I think this question came to test the understanding of the concept of a story's moral.
As quoted, the moral of the story is "Pineapples don't have sleeves", which is exactly what the owl said.
Not the world's greatest question, but if you submit to the story's intentional "nonsense" logic, it's pretty straightforward, I would say.
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PaterAlf: Problem is, it's still not question that can clearly be answered. The moral of a story isn't automatically wise. Regarding the context of the story it even was a pretty dumb answer in my eyes, because the owl didn't use it as a metaphor. The sentence was spoken and meant completely literally. It's like saying "I have two hands.". Might be a fact, but it's not extraordinary wise.
No, it's a good question. You're making a common mistake in trying to bring outside information into a passage, which schoolkids are taught not to do. You're trying to make your own value judgement, as an adult, that morals are not always wise.

Perhaps, but, we're only talking about this particular passage, not the summation of your adult life experience. It's actually difficult to explain this to adults, lol. It's not a coincidence that adults score most poorly on reading comprehension portions of "grown-up" exams like the LSAT. We always want to argue our experiences instead of just sticking to the bare information contained in the passage.

It's a good question.
Posted February 24, 2016
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yogsloth: No, it's a good question. You're making a common mistake in trying to bring outside information into a passage, which schoolkids are taught not to do. You're trying to make your own value judgement, as an adult, that morals are not always wise.

Perhaps, but, we're only talking about this particular passage, not the summation of your adult life experience. It's actually difficult to explain this to adults, lol. It's not a coincidence that adults score most poorly on reading comprehension portions of "grown-up" exams like the LSAT. We always want to argue our experiences instead of just sticking to the bare information contained in the passage.

It's a good question.
Even without outside knowledge, how is it a more wise answer than "You aren't even an animal! You're a tropical fruit!" which was also completely correct in the logic of the story? Just because it's the moral? Then it's not about reading comprehension, but about "what we tell you is always right!".

I work with schoolkids every day for more than 15 years now and I know that a lot of them would have give the wrong answer to such a strange question. But maybe it's just a fundamental difference between the school systems (and the priorities) of the USA and Germany. We hardly do multiple choice tests over here and when we do reading comprehension, we normally use open questions and let the kids explain their answers.
Posted February 24, 2016
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PaterAlf: Even without outside knowledge, how is it a more wise answer than "You aren't even an animal! You're a tropical fruit!" which was also completely correct in the logic of the story? Just because it's the moral?
Yes - it reflects the conclusion.

Keep in mind, this is not collegiate-level dissertation. This is not "present a rational adult argument to justify a variety of answers".

This is training elementary school children to read for and correctly identify simple, basic structural elements of writing. And in this passage, the wisest animal is the one who correctly identified the stated conclusion.

All reading comp passages at this level are inane to some degree. All of them can be rationally torn apart by highly-educated, critical-thinking adults applying adult standards. But for schoolkids, what's your alternative?

According to the 2014 census, there are something like 30 million elementary schoolchildren in the United States. Do you propose all multiple choice questions be tossed out and we adopt your method of having open-ended questions that children can explain... that's fine... but who do we pay to analyze that, and what standards to we then enact to judge? Somewhere along the line it has to eventually boil back down to a metric that can be used to evaluate progress, does it not?
Posted February 24, 2016
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yogsloth: According to the 2014 census, there are something like 30 million elementary schoolchildren in the United States. Do you propose all multiple choice questions be tossed out and we adopt your method of having open-ended questions that children can explain... that's fine... but who do we pay to analyze that, and what standards to we then enact to judge? Somewhere along the line it has to eventually boil back down to a metric that can be used to evaluate progress, does it not?
Well, that's what our teachers do (and what they learned in university). And in many cases you can evaluate progress without multiple choice questions. As I said before, we hardly use them and let kids describe and explain stuff instead.

The great thing with little kids is that they haven't adopted adult's rationalism and thinking at that point of their development. So in many cases (especially when it comes to stories) they'll come up with a completely logic explanation for illogical stuff (when you follow adult's logic). And most of the time the explanation makes sense and you can't say that it's completely wrong.

Problem with the test question is that it was thought of by adults. It follows adult's logic (The moral is the most logic choice) and adult's expectation what kid's will answer. I doubt that they tested the questions with a huge group of children when they developed the test. They would have recognized that some questions didn't work (which the results showed).
Posted February 24, 2016
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PaterAlf: Problem with the test question is that it was thought of by adults. It follows adult's logic (The moral is the most logic choice) and adult's expectation what kid's will answer. I doubt that they tested the questions with a huge group of children when they developed the test. They would have recognized that some questions didn't work (which the results showed).
I think there isn't an argument that a multiple-choice test like this is the best method of testing children. Certainly it isn't. With enough time and money, we would hire individual tutors for every child in the nation, who would then monitor and guide every child individually every day to achieve his maximum potential.

Given the logistical impossibility of the optimal solution, then, where do you go?

I don't have the exact answer, but I remain unconvinced that abandoning standardized testing is it. At least in the USA. The scale is simply too massive and the logistics too overwhelming.

I'm starting to feel really badly for the devs of this game, who have done such a good job of being responsive and are having to suffer through our debates, lol.
Posted February 24, 2016
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yogsloth: I'm starting to feel really badly for the devs of this game, who have done such a good job of being responsive and are having to suffer through our debates, lol.
I don't think we have to feel bad for them. After all the game is a satire about the ecucational system and when people start to discuss the matter, because of the game, the deveopers did a pretty good job. :)
Post edited February 24, 2016 by PaterAlf
Posted February 27, 2016
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yogsloth: Somewhere along the line it has to eventually boil back down to a metric that can be used to evaluate progress, does it not?
Ah, but that's the problem. Metrics requiring metrics requiring metrics. We like multiple choice answers as we can automate marking and then give everyone a number, this number being all that's required to get into a university, university gives people a number, this number being what's required for a job.

But why? It's senseless, purposefully small minded, and mostly rubbish. Teaching children lateral thinking is as easy as asking a question then telling them to 1) give an answer and 2) explain why. It takes more effort of course, and in our profit focused world it'll obviously never happen, but it's still a better idea than multiple choice answers which only make sense through faith.
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PaterAlf: The great thing with little kids is that they haven't adopted adult's rationalism and thinking at that point of their development. So in many cases (especially when it comes to stories) they'll come up with a completely logic explanation for illogical stuff
Adults do that all the time, our entire economic system relies upon such an insanity, and as such so does education, healthcare, really everything.

Go us.

Such matters with children are a good thing though as they teach the single most important fact about logic which most forget: It's a way of sorting through information, and doesn't guarantee a right answer. Without enough information you'll come up with the wrong answer so gathering more information should be important.
Post edited February 27, 2016 by FraggingBard
Posted February 28, 2016
How did I miss this release up to now ?
This game feels at its right place in here.

(Now we just need more cats games)
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionRelease: No Pineapple Left Behind(133 posts)(133 posts)
(133 posts)