Word: grader
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...have known equally many mature enough to handle, indeed thrive on, being treated like adults. The blue books in Professor Fleming's course, which I have read as a grader, always have reflected this--a substantial number of them mediocre and derived from circulating photocopied notes, but many others that showed genuine interest and understanding...
...seems pretty obvious that in any discussion of the various methods whereby the crafty student attempts to show the grader that he knows a lot more than he actually does, the vague generality is the key device. A generality is a vague statement that means nothing by itself, but when placed in an essay on a specific subject might very well mean something to a grader. The true master of a generality is the man who can write a 10-page essay, which means nothing at all to him, and have it mean a great deal to anyone who reads...
Just exactly what our equivocator's answer has to do with the original question is hard to say. The equivocator writes an essay about the point, but never on it. Consequently, the grader often mentally assumes that the right answer is known by the equivocator and marks the essay as an extension of the point rather than a complete irrelevance. The artful equivocation must imply the writes knows the right answer, but it must never get definite enough to eliminate any possibilities...
...long run the expert in the use of unwarranted assumptions comes off better than the equivocator. He would deal with out question on Hume not by baffling the grader or by fencing with him but like this: "It is absurd to discuss whether Hume is representative of the age in which he lived unless we note the progress of that age on all intellectual fronts. After all, Hume did not live in a vacuum...
...this point our assumption expert proceeds to discuss anything which strikes his fancy at the moment. If he can sneak the first assumption past the grader, then the rest is clear sailing. If he fails, he still gets a fair amount of credit for his irrelevant but fact-filled discussion of scientific progress in the 18th century. And it is amazing what some graders will swallow in the name of intellectual freedom. This piece first ran on June...