Barking and Marking

I'm marking essays this morning (or at least I'm meant to be). It's fascinating how some students can take what you've said in lectures and expand on it, cramming in detail and alternative points of view, while others can completely ignore even the basic factual stuff (and then object to low marks). Personality does play a part though. Even with anonymized marking, I can identify particular students by their approaches and interests.

What do we think of anonymized marking, by the way? The idea is that it enforces objectivity, cutting out pro- or anti- bias, sexism, racism etc. etc. and ensuring that the mark is based solely on the quality of the work. I can see the argument, but I would suggest that this implies that I am biased, sexist, racist and so on. More importantly, it replaces education with qualification. I don't see myself as a marker, a provider of grades, but as some sort of guide. Knowing who the students are allows me to contextualise the work according to my knowledge of a student's strengths and weakness, without necessarily marking more easily or harder (and perhaps able students should be pushed harder).

I don't think that students care about anonymized marking, as they usually put their names on their work (it's obscured on the cover-sheets). That may, of course, be because they haven't had any explanation of the purpose - we aren't very good at communicating our reasons for things.