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The second session I attended, “Why Rubrics Don’t Work for Me: Reclaiming Subjectivity in writing Assessment” presented by Maja Wilson, was very thought provoking. She began her presentation by talking about the phrase “Objective Assessment” as semantically contradictory. The word objective is related to distance/disinterestedness, as opposed to the word assessment, whose root means “to sit beside” or proximity. She related this contradiction in terms to educators use of writing rubrics, focusing specifically the way using rubrics to grade student writing forces teachers to change the way they read in order to assign a grade to student writing. She referred to this change in reading as “The view from nowhere,” a view where the richness and power of language is devalued in exchange for an ‘agreement’ about what good writing is – the agreement known as a rubric.  I can’t remember how many times in highschool when the teacher would hand back graded papers, and the only explanation for the grade were check marks next to the items on the rubric.

To illustrate this idea of “the voice from nowhere”, Wilson had her audience turn to one another and describe what came to mind when they thought of the word Grandmother. Several people shared their thoughts, most involved a story and very vivid details about their own grandmothers. She then asked the audience to come up with a definition of the word Grandmother. The difference between the two approaches was stark.  When we asked to be objective, to define what a grandmother was, all of the personal stories and vivid images disappeared. This is what Wilson is referring to when she talks about the difficult of applying objectivity to writing: describing vs. defining, objectivity vs. subjectivity — the evocative power of language is lost when we try to come up with a definition that everyone agrees with.

Maja went on to explain that assessment not only changes the way that readers read and writers write, but leaves no room for dialogue between the two. There were two important questions she kept in mind when reading student writing: What were you trying to do and why? When we are ticking off the items on the rubric as we read student’s writing, are free to think about the writing in terms on what goes on in our mind and why? The idea here is, that by allowing ourselves to read from our own view, we open up a dialogue with the student writer – we share what goes on in our mind while we read the work and ask what were you trying to do and why.

I think this last point is key. In viewing writing as a process, it’s easy to see how rubrics could derail the dialogue between readers (peer editors or the teacher) and writers — a critical component to developing writing. As a writer, when you give your work to another person, you want them to respond to the work, not to how well you satisfied the requirements of a rubric.