This blog post was written awhile ago and not posted: it was written after the first full dry run of the new Humanities II assessment tool, but I wanted to wait until I had feedback from my teammates and from all of you. Overall, I would say that I am happy with it, but I worry that some of you are nervous, and for good reason. However, by limiting it to four and by letting you choose almost everything having to do with it, you should have much greater control over things, especially as you work things out in the coming week.
As I said in class, it seems to me that part of the problem is that people are still trying to write essays. This makes sense, given that I described this assessment tool as the structure of an essay – or as everything that needs to be in an essay – without being an essay. Also, you all wrote essays in Humanities I. However, there are important ways in which this is not an essay. The simplest way of putting the difference is this: we do not need (and do not want) the filler. You earn no points for the filler – and if you are resorting to filler, you are leaving points on the proverbial assessment table. We want to push you toward greater precision and concision.
There are a few things that will help. First, we’ve had another lab that focused on the practice of making the connections and achieving the insights that we are after, and we have more to come. This process will be a bit more real now that you know more fully what we are after. Second, you will likely study fully before the actual midterm, and your study time will (ideally) be more productive because you have a clear sense of what you will be doing and (looking forward to the next point) of how it will be graded. Third, you’ll have had the disciplinary midterms, each of which reinforces things you need to know for the ID midterm. Fourth, you have now gotten some feedback from us. In particular, we have shared what it is that we are looking for when we grade, and I still plan to create a sample “A” assessment as a template. We also discussed different quality answers (down below) in class, and I hope that that helped.
Note that it is quality – not quantity – that matters. For example, last year the highest scoring essay writer (in all my sections of Humanities, whether I or II), wrote less and finished faster than everyone else. This person was always the first one done – and this person made every word count. This is what we are after. Thus, look at the trios of sentences down below. Each attempts to say the same thing in three sentences. It’s hard to judge them in an absolute way, since they only make full sense in the context of (a) answering a focus question and (b) connections to literature and music, but they give you a sense of the difference in quality that we encounter.
Take, for example, the following four trios of sentences.
D: In the Great Wave we see simplicity at work because there is just a wave and a mountain and some boats. These things really show us that we should focus on what is permanent. Life changes but things like nature stay the same. [This is poor, but you at least understand the very basics of what you should be doing when you analyze a piece in the context of this class.]
C: In the Great Wave, Horuki makes an excellent painting that uses just a few simple elements, such as a wave and a mountain, in order to show a more abstract and complex meaning. It shows us that the present moment is transitory and that what is important is more permanent. What is truly important is emptiness, and so there is a large empty space in the painting. [In class we noted that, depending on the connections made with the focus question and other pieces, this could be seen as a low B.]
A: In his The Great Wave, Hokusai uses the simple elements of two waves, a mountain, and three boats to convey the extent to which we get caught up in the present moment and lose sight of what is permanent. The wave represents what is impermanent (transitory) and the mountain represents what is permanent, but really what is permanent is emptiness, which really symbolizes everything, and so there is empty space in the woodprint. The woodprint has an asymmetrical design that helps to create this crucially important empty space. [In class I had this listed as a B, but upon reading it – and comparing it to the next answer – it was clear that this was the most we could expect in terms of excellent. It would likely be an A. It might be a B if the connection to the focus question and other pieces is not clear.]
Nuts: Hokusai’s The Great Wave is a colored woodprint primarily composed of three simple elements (two waves, three boats, and a mountain), and he uses these simple elements to economically convey a deeper meaning insofar as the wave initially dominates our vision while what is more enduring – the mountain – is smaller. However, a reflective viewing reveals that the wave, while it is what seems most pressing (especially to those in the boats), is impermanent (mujo) and will pass, and this inversion suggests that smallness of the mountain signifies the extent to which we overlook what is permanent and enduring. This realization then in turn points us to the empty space established by the asymmetry of the large wave and small mountain: together these two natural elements create awareness of the mysterious emptiness that signifies the true nature of all reality, and it is this alone that truly endures. [We decided that this was clearly just Mr. Professor-Man speaking and not anything that an actual student would say or could be expected to say.]
There’s more to come: I plan to post a blog reflecting on our recent lab on Romanticism, and I am still working on the sample “A” assessment for you. In the meantime, thank you for all your feedback and hard work.
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