Test blindness?

[NothingToSeeHere]

I think you mean, "precedent"?

That's the one an established president in class would be a whole other kettle of fish

 

[Graphin]

That's good, I've heard good thinks about the German education system. Sadly the British school system focuses so much on spoon feeding students facts to be regurgitated in exams that actually learning how to think critically has to be taught from scratch when they start uni, and a lot of students really struggle with having to take such a different approach to learning.

Academics who have worked in universities in the USA have told me that even at that level actually thinking is often not encouraged in American unis, which is sad.

It's not really core school here already

 

[Progster]

That's the one an established president in class would be a whole other kettle of fish

Yes, just imagine Donald Trump up in front of a class, trying to teach kids

 

[Catana]

""City walls in medieval Europe"" I think anyone would consider this an open topic that you could develop in whatever way you wished. It has absolutely nothing to do with your perception as an autistic person.

 

[Shamar]

I might know the topic, but my pervasive inability to understand what the teacher wants me to say, costs me points every single time.

I have lived with this my whole life, and not until I was diagnosed at age 60 did I understand what was going on. I believe that one of the common characteristics (if not a diagnostic criteria) of Asperger's is difficulty or outright inability to understand the nuances of communication that all the NTs have. he responses you have gotten so far seem to support this. It seems like we have no difficulty understanding what was written, but not what is implied. What is implied is frequently the real question.

Your example of city walls is a good example. Your class probably went over this thoroughly, and the other students put that emphasis together with the question and knew what was being asked. All you saw was the question. I believe most Aspies would have interpreted the question exactly as you did. I certainly would have.

Unfortunately, I have no idea how to fix the problem. If I did, I would have cured myself many years ago.

 

[Shamar]

For example, if we have a logical claim: "Mack owns a blue car", there is nothing in the logical or linguistic structure of the sentence that let us know what the claim is. Is the disputed claim that Mack, not Nicholas owns the car? Are we disagreeing whether or not Mack owns or rents a car? Are we disputing the color of Macks car? Are we maybe uncertain as to what blue machine is owned my Mack?

You touched on a good point here but went off in another direction (not to complain; the direction you took was good and relevant). My point is that any fact or information requires context to be understood. A fact by itself is useless. I think we don't really recognize this because we are always surrounded by context. This is why conversation stops when someone states a non sequitur. People have to work out the context before they can give it meaning.

 

[All-Rounder]

That's indeed an unfair situation. The issue seems to be the class has a limited amount of data and in order to know what to write you best need to scroll through the titles of the main course and try to remember what can be asked, how much they know about the topics, to know what to focus on, on each situation. I also remember in our notebooks we had like a scheme with details (that were not even the same in the book, or were only selected from the whole book) that if youd ask someone who has learned it from somewhere else without being specific enough, they wouldn't give the same answer or wouldnt know which 4 things the teacher even named, and if they bring others up, they may not even count on the test, because the teacher may not remember others neither care to look up to see if theyre true. Plus the thing kids must learn are specific, so the teacher has to get the kids to learn those specific ones, so he may not give points if you dont have those in your test.

It might be useful to you to talk to the teacher in private and explain the issue, asking him to be more precise with his questions on tests, because you study a lot of history on your own and not from the course books, and have always been confused about what to debate in tests (you can explain to him these two points you wrote in your post here), and ask that he does not disclose this in front of the other students. If you can obtain an online contact with your teacher, it may be easier for you to discuss this with him.

Sorry if you're not looking for advice, I just felt like saying these.

 

[NecroCurator]

"Sorry if you're not looking for advice, I just felt like saying these."

Well, I'm certainly not gonna turn down advice. It is true that I am just generally interested on whether this could be an autism-thing. Still, advice is sorely needed.

Explaining would have been nice in high-school, but now that I'm in uni it's really not an option. Individual courses can be sometimes massive to the degree that individual adjustments cannot be made on part of the professor. On smaller courses the professor asks us things anyway, so in a way those cases are already covered. This is still somewhat a problem at uni, but it has'nt cost me entire courses just yet.

 

[Tom]

I visited many medieval cities, just to see the walls. But I probably would have missed the point of the essay too.