TOKenism (Redux)

Over the last few days I've been looking at what the institutional machine has thought of the essays my many students have written. Some cogs of the machine actually have spent time and effort to make useful returns, and I am sure the students will benefit. Some are less useful, and the thought that sprang to my mind on reading their comments was, "What are they paying this bozo for?"

The point is a simple one (madness, here I am trying to make it simpler): there are so-called teachers who are not doing their work!

Feedback to a student cannot possibly consist of a few ticks, some gratuitous underlining without elaboration, and a few cryptic annotations consisting of things like 'E.g.??' and '?'. If the total number of symbols a marker puts on a student's essay is smaller than the number of fingers on both my hands combined, it tells me that this person either has nothing to say or is incapable of saying it. Either condition is sufficient for a rational administrator to consider getting rid of this deadwood.

There is another more general point, of course. This is that in any theory of knowledge, if data are minimal (just remember that the singular of 'data' is 'datum', although I once heard a student say 'dato'), the information burden shifts to the interpreter of the data. But even then, if the data are too sparse, no amount of interpretation can create adequate information.

This is where the poor students are now in some cases. Having done their conscientious self-evaluations with me dangling the rubrics in front of them, they are convinced some of the markers are wrong. So am I. What now, though? The institution has the machine, and the beans are ground by the grinder. One can only hope the final tasters can sense the underlying body and quality of the brew.