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The criteria for assessment in my honors seminars are implicit in the syllabus, which describes each course as “a shared conversational inquiry” in which “a premium will be placed on precision, explanation, and defense” and in which “students will be held doubly accountable: for courteously listening to the contributions of others and for patiently justifying their own observations”. The syllabus explains further that the assigned essays should be viewed, not as research papers or book reports, but “as continuing conversations” in which their authors “wrestle in writing with the ideas opened up by the books” discussed in class.
These aims and this approach to grading are unusual enough, however, that it is often useful on the first day of class to spell out the criteria a bit more fully and to set forth more explicitly what standards the students will be asked to adhere to. The Socratic method of teaching, with its continual use of elenchus or cross-examination, is well suited to helping students learn to think in a more cogent and disciplined fashion, and it is the regularity, intensity, and thoroughness of their thinking, and not their mastery of a certain “content” or collection of facts, which count in these seminars.
As a means to helping students assess their own progress in becoming better thinkers, not just at the end of the semester but on a day to day basis, I encourage them to pose the following sets of questions—to each other in class and outside of class to themselves as they read the books and prepare their essays. The questions are organized in nine categories, which amount to nine essential criteria for assessing work in the seminars:
1. Clarity. Could you elaborate further? Could you give me an example from something we read for today? Could you just say that again, more slowly and audibly?!
2. Accuracy. How might we check on that fact? Is every word in this essay spelled correctly? Have I verified the wording and page number of that quotation?
3. Precision. Could you please define that word? Could you refer us to a particular passage? Does that sentence I just typed conform to C. S. Lewis’s rule for writing: “Decide exactly what you want to say, and say exactly that”?
4. Relevance. How does that observation relate to the problem at hand? How does it bear on the question So-and-so asked last time? Does what I am about to say help us understand the second to the last page of our reading assignment?
5. Depth. What hidden or double meanings may make this a more difficult problem than we suspect? What are some of the complexities of this question? Have we probed beneath the surface of our own assumptions?
6. Breadth. Do we need to approach this problem from a different angle? How does the author’s perspective differ from that of the other authors we have read? What are some of the implications we need to deal with?
7. Logic. Do your observations make sense when taken all together? Does my first paragraph really fit with my last? Does what I conclude truly follow from the evidence I presented?
8. Significance. Is this the most important problem to consider? Is this the central idea of the book—or the chapter, the paragraph, the sentence? Which of these ideas is the most crucial to our deliberations this semester?
9. Fairness. Do I have a vested but unexamined interest in this point of view? Have I given thoughtful time to my reading and have I really understood what I read? Have I listened to what other people say in class and tried to see things as they do?
Throughout the semester, I make a point of observing each of the students very carefully, as they should be observing themselves. It is evident which of them are taking these criteria seriously, which are therefore fully prepared for each class, which are willing to assist their peers in becoming more confident and able dialecticians, and which are open to improving the written expression of their thought through a careful study of my critical comments, both propositional and “symbolic”, on their essays.
But something else is important, too. I also make a point of keeping track of which students are prepared to take risks—to tackle the more difficult and fruitful questions in their papers and to put forward the more venturesome observations in class discussion. These risks will, of course, often be met with criticisms, and the proposals a given student advances may more than once be rejected. But I remind them that it is only when we express ourselves freely and fully that our thinking is given the chance to improve. Imaginative—even “off the wall”—insights, coupled with wit and good humor, do not go unnoticed, or unrewarded.