It’s a fierce mild Thursday evening and Ms. McDonnell is in her classroom correcting Maths exams and she is absolutely breezing through them.
But just across the hall Mr. Lynch, correcting English exams, is progressing at a much slower pace.
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I’ve never corrected Maths equations but I imagine they are a lot easier than English essays. Namely because Maths answers can only be right or wrong.
Whether as English essays can be right for one corrector and wrong for another. The marking scheme is open to personal interpretation. As with any creative endeavour.
Providing constructive feedback on creative projects or even personal performance is an immensely valuable skill.
I believe one reason this skill is so important, is that it exists in short supply. Not everyone can do it. Some will shy away from providing feedback. Some will simply reply with the bare minimum – ‘Yep, it’s good’.
I can understand why people do this. The task requires the difficult work of sitting down, taking the time to gather your thoughts and transform them into constructive non offensive feedback so the receiver has the best chance of learning.
Simply labeling something as ‘shit’ is a cop out and not useful to anyone.
Doing the hard work to help another understand is a selfless and indispensable act.
Thomas Duggan 