| > Whatever I produced for the first prompt can be graded by ticking off boxes and looking at my grammar; whatever I produced for the second prompt would need a thorough investigation of my own writing style and a framework of grading that takes into account my own voice as an author. The two prompts motivate the writer to practice two completely different skillsets; they're really not comparable. The first one is focused more on the fundamentals of close reading and analysis. The writer needs to understand what the theme of "chaos" means, then closely read the novel or review their notes to identify literary devices or techniques that theme, and then tie it together in a "report". It requires the assignee to practice very basic skills... it's technical practice, not artistry. The second prompt is the artistry - it's an assignment in discourse or rhetoric. The thing is, it's not possible to successfully execute the second prompt unless you've mastered the techniques from the first prompt. Beyond constructing logical or emotional arguments that may be tailored to your audience (your best friend), you still have to collect evidence from the novel. It might not be a list of literary devices, but if one of your arguments was that the book was poorly and confusingly written, you would still probably need to collect evidence of specific passages that support your claim. The whole point of the first prompt is to build the skill to do this, but with some hand-holding/constraints for practice. I won't defend page limits, but even the reference style mandate is important because it has implications for how you actually write the essay. I deal with technical stakeholders all the time, and the amount of time that we could clear up issues if someone would just properly cite a reference can be ridiculous... perhaps those stakeholders were the teenagers who didn't bother to follow the citation guidelines for their literature class? |
As a teenage musician, I hated drilling my scales and etudes. Why bother when practice was limited and I had cool ensemble and solo rep to learn? What I didn't understand and appreciate at the time is that all the technical drudgery serves a very real purpose. Most of the existing pedagogy is directly pulled from, based on, or references real repertoire which you'll undoubtedly encounter in your musical career.
All those scales in intervals? Well, you can't even begin to make a complex passage musical if you can't execute the technique! Arpeggios in weird fingering/shifting patterns? Turns out that some very exposed orchestral passage necessitates that you use an oddball fingering because it's just not practical to do anything else in context. That entire development section in the concerto you need to cram for an audition? Good thing that one of your etudes book was effectively variations and embellishments on that section, so you can lean on muscle memory and focus on making it sound nice!
Essay writing is much the same. No matter what I'm writing - an e-mail, a project proposal, a performance review, whatever - I'm trying to communicate a point. That means constructing an argument and supplying evidence. And doing so in a way that your audience will grok without any additional intervention. You build this skill by practicing, sometimes in ways that seem dumb, boring, and disconnected from reality. Not every pedagogy is ground so well in reality as my music example, but I can't imagine that the cynical take that it's all purely to automate grading is a rational take on things.