I typed an essay on what hap­pened about the assess­ment fiasco yes­ter­day, but it went and lost a cookie again (I walked away, the total “page open” time would have been about 2-3hours, so that’s under­stand­able), so there goes a few pages of entertainment/grief/boredom, depend­ing on who you are.

Just out of curios­ity, who ARE you?  I’m look­ing at the Netscape user/users who have accounted for 60% of my traf­fic thus far this month.  I’m impressed.  I thought Netscape was dead, but evi­dently not.  Well.  Maybe it is.  But then, at least the Un-Dead browser users are com­ing and vis­it­ing my web­site.  The browsers are un-dead, that is, not the users.  Although they may be as well.  Who knows… write if you’re an un-dead user vis­it­ing this web­site, okay?

An un-dead user run­ning Netscape, espe­cially.  You know what’s REALLY inter­est­ing?  59.4% of the users are run­ning an OLD OLD OLD ugly ver­sion of Netscape.  Well, okay, so it’s not that old.  But 6.2.1 is get­ting mildly ancient for many peo­ple to be using, I would think.  At least it isn’t 4.x — I don’t know how nice that would play with all the CSS in these parts — not that it really mat­ters… If it can’t do it, the web­site is seman­ti­cally accept­able when dis­played as plain text in lin­ear form.  Don’t believe me?  Load up your favourite WAP browser, and assum­ing there isn’t any­thing par­tic­u­larly quirky on my front page at that point in time, it should dis­play plenty fine.

Yes.  So.  About that assess­ment.  I’m typ­ing this in a hum­ble text edi­tor, sim­ply so I don’t have to worry about ses­sion times, and will just copy and paste in when I’m done, how­ever many hours that may take, heh.

It all began on Mon­day after­noon this week (it’s only this week for another 3 hours 42 min­utes as I type this — okay, okay, enough dis­trac­tions!), as I arrived (late, due to a cer­tain con­certs un-punctuality… or some­thing) to Exten­sion Eng­lish to be told that our teacher (Mrs. Christie) had marked most of the assess­ments, but there were a hand­ful remain­ing; we would not have them returned that day, how­ever we were wel­come to col­lect them when they became avail­able at 8 a.m. the morn­ing fol­low­ing from recep­tion in BBC.  That said, she wanted to read out some of them which she had already marked to the class.

The “class com­bi­na­tion” thing hap­pened, as it some­times does, and we were all (at least, I was, and oth­ers also made snide remarks to the same effect) antic­i­pat­ing Mrs. Crump launch­ing into a power-trip dri­ven tirade about… what­ever it is that lady speaks about (I’ve never quite both­ered to ascer­tain that one).  That didn’t hap­pen: both classes were com­bined so that she (Mrs. Christie, not the cats mother) could com­ment on the assess­ments, and read out some of them to the class(I’ll drop the “es” — the plural is implied from here on in, okay?).

Alex McSkimming’s story was read out (title unre­called, plot was dri­ven by real-world events; appar­ently, the asso­ci­a­tion between reli­gious sym­bol­ogy, specif­i­cally Chris­t­ian sym­bols, and Vam­pires — or at least the repul­sion of — came about as a result of the Churches pol­icy with regard to the Black Plague.  I really want to read it again, for the con­tex­tual expla­na­tion and reflec­tion as much as for the story itself), and then another — Andrew Garrett’s com­po­si­tion, reflect­ing on the neces­sity of Blood for life — it wasn’t as Renfield-ish as it sounds — it was draw­ing (not draw­ing blood!) par­al­lels between the Blood Bank as a nec­es­sary com­po­nent of soci­ety for the preser­va­tion of life, and Vam­pires con­sump­tion of Blood as nec­es­sary for the con­tin­u­a­tion of THEIR life.  Mine was next.  At least, the first draft of mine was next.

She lifted the folder, and flipped to the story.  The cov­er­sheet fell into my view;  I asked “Are you sure you want to read that ver­sion out?  That’s my first draft, judg­ing from the cover sheet…”.  She was some­what con­fused… “Oh, so it is… I hope I didn’t mark you on that one!”  Insert ner­vous laugh­ter from all par­ties here.  The story was laid down, and she con­tin­ued to speak about some­thing else.  I was assured that she’d look at it, and let me know the fol­low­ing morn­ing — although she was “sure” she hadn’t.

8 a.m. came and went.  I didn’t get to school until 8:20, but from talk­ing to other peo­ple, I don’t think that many went and even tried to get theirs back in the morn­ing.  Mrs. Christie came down­stairs (or maybe not… I don’t know where her office lies) when called, and…

Yeah.  I can’t remem­ber how she phrased it.  My re-telling of the sequence of events has always begun with “Guess what!”.  I’d already guessed, of course — the glass is half empty.  Do you know what really bites about the whole thing at this point?  She’d just told me how much she liked my draft, and what mark I was to get for it.  Now, there are cer­tain marks which… aren’t con­ducive to mak­ing stu­dents want a remark.  This was one of them.  ANYWAY.  She was to re-examine the final copy, and I was to return at recess.

Done.

I return at recess to be told that Alanna has enquired/complained/tortured small ani­mals about why she got the mark she did, and as such the return of all as-yet-unreleased assess­ments was on hold as mis­cel­la­neous teach­ers took another look at the assessments.

That’s alright.  I can deal with that.  I’m not hang­ing out for a mark or any­thing here.

Lunch. I return, to be informed by Mrs. Court (the recep­tion­ist in BBC) that all the assess­ments were in a pile here.  There was a ges­ture, too ;).  Of course, mine wasn’t.  It was in a dis­tinc­tive red folder, and was at a glance evi­dently not there.  I flipped through the pile any­way, before say­ing “Could you please call Mrs. Christie again?”

And so, again, she came from ThatPlaceWhereMrs.Christie’sOfficeIs™ to recep­tion.  Aaand mine hadn’t been marked, due to a lack of free classes for her that day, or some­thing.  I was to return that after­noon, again.

After­noon came, as did I.  I was expelled by the Dean of the Senior Col­lege.  Seri­ously!  Appar­ently I’d been loi­ter­ing in recep­tion too much, or some­thing.  Mrs. Earle is great fun ;)  Any­way.  It is at this point where I begin to tire telling the story, because up until now, the time­frame looked as though the whole thing would be resolved in a day.  Nope!

She arrived, and we sat down.  Actu­ally, she arrived, said “I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, can you come back in 10″, I made a phone call, walked around mind­lessly for a bit, then came back, and THEN we sat down.  But I digress (again).  In her read­ing of the weighty tome (where weighty = prob­a­bly less than 100 grams), she has unveiled a dark and pow­er­ful secret.  So Un-Dead was my story, that two pages had arisen, and, unaided, made their escape (ess-ka-pey!) from the clutches of the Eng­lish depart­ment!  Or maybe I failed to sub­mit it, or she lost it.  Hey, one of the above will do — per­son­ally, I’m more excited about the first explanation.

Hav­ing read the doc­u­ment in its entirety, she decided that my story had regressed in clar­ity (at least, cer­tainly within the first sec­tion) between the first and sec­ond drafts.  You know what?  I could have told you that!  Some­thing to do with unfath­omable word lim­its?  Nah.  But that’s cool.  I’ll drop it.  I went 700 words over, so I can’t com­plain too much.  I’ll have a fur­ther rant about clar­ity and her/the depart­ments mark­ing schemes in a while — for now, there are other things to address.

Now, the cov­er­sheet and first page of the final draft were some­what AWOL — or with leave, what­ever.  At this point, she asked a ques­tion which I am still get­ting over — this, ladies and gen­tle­men, is a full 4 days (or is it 5?  Meh, I’m doing exten­sion ENGLISH, not MATHS!) on, and I have yet to START mov­ing on past this ques­tion.  It was, with­out a doubt, the stu­pid­est thing I’ve ever heard a teacher say.

“Now, should I give you nine­teen, or twenty for this?  What do you think you deserve?”

I’m sorry, you just DON’T ask a stu­dent that.  Regard­less as to whether or not you believe they would give an appro­pri­ate answer or not.  Per­son­ally, I don’t think ANYONE should EVER get “full marks” in any sub­jec­tively marked sub­ject (because, despite the best efforts of the Board of Stud­ies to destroy lit­er­a­ture and define mark­ing as neat, easy, criteria-based “tick-a-box” mark­ing, that isn’t the way it works.  That is some­thing I would really strug­gle with as a teacher, I think…) at the best of times, sim­ply because there is no such thing as a per­fect text.  There is that, and then there is my desire to achieve — but ask­ing for 20 doesn’t pro­vide a sense of achieve­ment, anyway.

Per­haps that was the motive behind the ques­tion?  Whether I answered “nine­teen” or “twenty”, the result was the same — my mark, as per­ceived by myself, had decreased.  I said “I’m not answer­ing that, I can’t answer that objec­tively — can I bring in a reprint of those pages tomor­row, so that you can re-mark it?”.

What hap­pened next was nearly as astound­ing.  Hav­ing just explained why I had lost the mark, con­cern was voiced that I may take this oppor­tu­nity to edit the first page appro­pri­ately, in order to regain the mark.  “Can I trust you not to change it?”.  I don’t remem­ber what I said now.  Whether it was “That’s up to you” or “Hang on, you just asked me what I should get for my own work, and yet you don’t trust me to make a reprint, even though my edit­ing, IF ANY would have to be per­fect to the point that the sen­tence which was con­tin­ued on page two of the text flowed as though no change on the first page had occurred at all?  I’m sorry, please, give, me twenty or nine­teen right now as you wish.” I hon­estly couldn’t say.  Tech­ni­cally, edit­ing so that the first page flowed into the sec­ond seam­lessly would have been near impos­si­ble.  AND, that’s assum­ing I could be both­ered.  I’m sorry, but I like to think I have more of a life than that (not to men­tion moral­ity and a sense of values).

What­ever I said, the out­come was she was will­ing to let me bring in a reprint the fol­low­ing day.

This is Wednes­day:
I come to school, drop the print­out at recep­tion ask­ing that it be given to Mrs. Christie as was con­ve­nient, and return in the after­noon.  It hasn’t been marked.

Thurs­day comes.  I seize Mrs. Christie in the cor­ri­dor, and am informed I have 19 as a final mark.  I am happy.  I have clo­sure.  I also have a mark of 95% for a work which really doesn’t deserve even that (espe­cially con­sid­er­ing my com­plete vio­la­tion of any con­cerns of brevity, with my FINAL com­ing in at 1700ish, and the first draft sit­ting at a lovely 2000).

I still haven’t both­ered to retrieve my phys­i­cal copy, that can wait until next Tuesday’s lesson.

Now that the recount­ing is over, and heads are still spin­ning, I’m going to launch into a tirade.

CLEAR!!!

Okay.  There are a few things.  Firstly, the sub­ject of per­fect marks.  I addressed it before, but since this is where I’m vent­ing about all the things I think are wrong with it, it needs to be men­tioned (at least briefly) again.

IT
SHOULD
NEVER
HAPPEN
in sub­jec­tive subjects.

Lit­er­a­ture is not math­e­mat­i­cal, it is not sci­en­tific.  It is abstract, free, more beau­ti­ful than math­e­mat­ics — end­less scope for rigid struc­ture or dis­jointed abstrac­tion is per­mit­ted within its bounds, and this is some­thing no insti­tu­tion should even think of try­ing to break down into sim­ple criterions.

Why?  Because, for one, being (poten­tially) that abstract, there is an incred­i­bly nar­row prob­a­bil­ity of pre-emptively cre­at­ing cri­te­ria to suit the work which shall be sub­mit­ted.  Addi­tion­ally, the assign­ment of marks to (espe­cially) cre­ative works is some­thing which is just another part con­tribut­ing towards the score-obsessed high school cul­ture which exists in NSW (and prob­a­bly the rest of the world) in the senior years today.

The need for quan­tifi­ca­tion is recog­nised, how­ever this can­not be broadly applied to things such as it is now!

I’ll leave that where it is, else this post may dou­ble in length again.

My sec­ond… objec­tion towards this whole thing is about the REASONS my first draft scored perfectly.

It wasn’t per­fect!  Pre­vi­ous com­ments aside, I haven’t seen the cri­te­ria, so this is all “spec­u­la­tion” (O! Look what they have done to us! The author spec­u­lates upon his own work, as the BoS looks over us and gloats!).  But there were at least FOUR PRINTED PAGES which WERE INCLUDED with my sub­mit­ted assess­ment CLEARLY DOCUMENTING AND OUTLINING THE NEED FOR CHANGES IN the first draft!  Com­ments were included both from myself (which is accept­ably dis­counted, as any com­ments should be included in reflec­tions, but this was not), Alec Sewell, and Sam Holloway!

Gram­mar, struc­ture, spelling, clar­ity, frag­men­ta­tion, and pre­sen­ta­tion of con­cepts was (in my opin­ion) much bet­ter exe­cuted in the pro­ceed­ing edits than in the orig­i­nal.  And I’m not the only one to think so.

The impli­ca­tion of this is some­what dis­turb­ing.  Either the orig­i­nal edit (1st draft) was not read as the orig­i­nal when the mark was assigned — that is, prior to los­ing the first two pages of the final copy (yes, that was an accu­sa­tion — I don’t know if it was me or her, but I’m fairly sure I sub­mit­ted it), it was marked, and scored 20 — or the orig­i­nal edit was mis­marked to the extent that DOCUMENTED errors were overlooked.

Either way, and in both my com­plaints, a “per­fect mark” is clearly of lit­tle sig­nif­i­cance where such errors may abound unseen, unde­tected, and appar­ently unim­por­tantly.  The more I think about it, the more I want to see this cri­te­ria sheet.  I have a feel­ing my sus­pi­cions about the inef­fec­tive­ness of sub­jec­tive “tick-a-box” mark­ing may have just been con­firmed, or at least strengthened…

as such sus­pi­cions are merely sub­jec­tive, of course. ;)