Dear all
In repsonse to Alan Hudson's friend of a friend's questions on
marking...Surely if we are to take at least some of postmodernism seriously
then all of the questions are suspect..
- have they understood the question?
What is understanding? Surely the inevitable slippage between
signifier and signified makes such a question difficult - tha answer is
either a) understanding is impossible or b) yes tehy have understood it as
understanding lies in the consumption of the question and not the
production.
- have they addressed the question?
Maybe its the wring question.
- have they constructed a coherent argument?
Coherence? That's a tricky one - very modernist sounding and
hightly undesirable.
- have they used evidence appropriately?
Evidence and appropriateness? This suggests an unproblematic
relationship between observable facts, interpretations etc and the ways
things are..and appropriate just means proper...
- have they been creative?
The death of originality...
- have they worked with a sensible structure?
Structure? Surely not
- have they defined their terms clearly?
Again the problem of slippage makes this impossible and futile
- have they produced an interesting answer?
Good question
Which all goes to question the whole process of marking
Unless of course we you are not postmodernists after all - much safer in
papers than in the classroom it would seem
Tim Cresswell
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