1. Student I.D: 200778264
by Jack Johnson
FILE
TIME SUBMITTED 23-MAY-2016 11:14AM
SUBMISSION ID 58253359
WORD COUNT 4827
CHARACTER COUNT 28142
FINAL_ESSAY.DOCX (45.05K)
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17. FINAL GRADE
67/0
Student I.D: 200778264
GRADEMARK REPORT
GENERAL COMMENTS
Instructor
Feedback
An impressively ambitious essay that
incorporates lots of independent thought and
argument. It demonstrates a good level of
understanding and develops an interesting and
distinctive central argument. It f alls down a bit
because ultimately it seeks to cover a bit too
much ground and as result parts of the
discussion are too superf icial. While the account
of the Williams-type position is very ef f ectively
handled, and the author does a good job of
explaining why some of the cruder criticisms of
her position miss their mark, it's less good in its
account of the 'ref orm' perspective. The
identif ication of canon ref orm with 'relativism' is
too quick, and the connection between such
ref orm and the promotion of civic purposes is
under-developed. Similarly, the appeal to Callan
was interesting, but his position is complex and
doesn't really receive the level of attention it
needs.
Feedf orward
The structure needs to be a bit more f ocused
than it is. Concentrate on the core elements of
the argument and explain them in lots of detail.
Cut away the less f undamental material.
PAGE 1
PAGE 2
Comment 1
There's a lot going on in this paragraph - it sounds interesting, but it's quite hard to
untangle.
Comment 2
I'm not sure it's quite right to identif y civic education with liberalism. Some liberals def end
civic education; others don't.
PAGE 3
18. Comment 3
You could do with a ref erence here.
PAGE 4
Comment 4
This implies that it's a jointly authored book, but that's not the case - it's an edited volume
with contributions f rom several dif f erent authors... I'm not trying to be pedantic - it's just that
the view you describe in this sentence is held by some of the contributors, but not by all,
and so it would be worth stating more clearly which of the authors you are ref erring to here.
PAGE 5
Comment 5
Maybe you will come to this, but it would be worth explaining this idea a bit more f ully. How
would revising the canon help to maintain cohesiveness and mutual understanding?
PAGE 6
Comment 6
This would benef it f rom f urther elaboration.
PAGE 7
Comment 7
I think there are other arguments f or 'liberal ref orm' that are not based on relativism; Susan
Wolf 's is one example.
PAGE 8
Comment 8
This needs to be explained f urther.
Comment 9
I think you need to say more to def end the claim that Douglass is not of f ering a political
theory (it seems to me that he very obviously is).
PAGE 9
Comment 10
Well, I see the point, but in f act Douglass didn't replace Plato. Insof ar as he 'replaced'
anyone, it was Edmund Burke (Plato was removed f or other reasons). And, in any case, the
purpose of the module is not to teach the 'greatest political theorists of all time', but rather
to teach f oundational concepts (like f reedom, power and resistance) by looking at a range
of historical texts.
[Actually, I think this is a problem with the whole debate about the canon - there is a
tendency f or both sides to assume that the sole legitimate purpose of teaching a text is
that it is 'the best']
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FOCUS ON QUESTION
KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
ANALYSIS AND EVALUATION
STRUCTURE AND ARGUMENT
GRADING FORM: POLIS 2014.2
JACK JOHNSON
Very good
Very good
Very good
Good
