Working on rubrics while having our “tropical storm day” at home. I’m distilling my view on grading. I hate grading. I enjoy reading papers and giving feedback. I hate trying distill that into a grade. It’s almost always dumb and reductive.
Richard Hughes Gibson at Hedgehog Review (h/t Front Porch Republic):
So how should educators proceed? In her Rules: A Short History of What We Live By (2022), historian of science Lorraine Daston recalls another sort of “rule” that we might apply. That is the ancient understanding of “rule”—kanon in Greek and regula in Latin—as “model” or “paradigm,” preserved in English in a formula such as “The Rule of St. Benedict.” Daston argues that “paradigmatic rules” are especially useful because, unlike laws, they do not demand special dispensations (or litigation) when exceptions arise or drastic revisions when circumstances change. “Rules-as-models are the most supple, nimble rules of all,” Daston writes, “as supple and nimble as human learning.”
The model may be to some extent codified, but Daston stresses that this kind of rule’s enactment depends on the relationship between those who provide the model and those who imitate it. In The Rule of St. Benedict, the abbot holds his post because he doesn’t simply know the rule; he embodies it. The abbot, in turn, exercises discretion over the application of the code to promote the good of the members of and visitors to the community. Those under the rule strive to emulate this model person—not just “the rules”—in their own lives. “Whether the model was the abbot of a monastery or the artwork of a master or even the paradigmatic problem in a mathematics textbook, it could be endlessly adapted as circumstances demanded,” Daston observes. The ultimate goal of such a rule is not to police specific jurisdictions; it is to form people so that they can the carry general principles, as well as the rule’s animating spirit, into new settings, projects, problems. We need a new Rule of Education—one that grants educators discretion and is invested in students’ formation—for the age of AI.
This shift in understanding rules as restrictions to rules as formation is amazing and I love it.
theimaginativeconservative.org
Education as if Truth Mattered
“The title of this essay, “Education as if Truth Mattered,” is taken from the subtitle of Christopher Derrick’s book, Escape from Scepticism: Liberal Education as if Truth Mattered, published in 1977. Derrick’s subtitle was itself borrowed and adapted from the subtitle of E. F. Schumacher’s international bestseller, Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, published four years earlier. Derrick and Schumacher were friends, the former being instrumental in introducing the latter to the Church’s social teaching, and the two books have much more in common than their ostensibly different subjects would suggest. In both cases, the authors illustrate how modernity’s philosophical materialism has undermined the very foundations of civilized life and how the solution to the problem is a return to traditional concepts of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Schumacher turned to the wisdom of the ancients to help him understand the defects of the economy; Derrick turned to the wisdom of the ancients to correct the defects of the academy. Whether considering the plight of the economy or the academy, both men showed how the denigration of the good, the fragmentation of the true, and the destruction of the beautiful have resulted in a world that is bankrupt in terms of true wealth.”
College: A Place for Training Exiles
“All of us know this in our bones: we know that something has gone wrong and that people and places are broken. Yet we still try to restore the connections necessary to make our places healthy and whole. The season of college can help us learn to be like Israel is commanded to be in Jeremiah 29: Israel is in Babylon, in exile. God promises that, after seventy years, He will bring them back to their place. Despite this promise to eventually return them to their place, He does not command them to do nothing in their exile. Instead, he commands them to build homes, to raise families and start new families, and to plant gardens and eat their produce. In the same manner, we are to be in this world while recognizing that it is not our final destination but a training ground for our final home.
What I have learned from this season in life is that it is good to form connections in college. It is good to grow attached to the place where I have been further formed. It is good to read books, plant gardens, marry and be merry, but it is also necessary to recognize that my time in this place will come to an end. There are two corresponding mistakes that a college student can make when trying to live well during this season of life. The first is to disregard forming new connections or even to start withering the roots which do grow in order to make the transplanting process more bearable. Friendships wane, and one natural response is to try to be stoic about it all. This stunts emotional, intellectual, and developmental growth. If we do not form and water these roots, we risk killing these roots altogether and stunting our growth when we are transplanted elsewhere.
Leaving a place and community we have come to love will hurt. Still, it will be good because it will hurt – the hurt is a sign that we have lived well in this place.”
Huh. Remote learning was bad, actually. Who knew.
Not wrong.
