How to Assess a Discipline

Bartholomew goes on to add and to clarify that as follows The student has to appropriate Or be appropriated by a specialized discourse And he has to do this As though he were easily and comfortably One with his audience. He has to invent the university By assembling and mimicking its language While finding some compromise Between idiosyncrasy A personal history on one hand And the requirements of convention The history of a discipline On the other hand Now some of us might be saying Well look, I tell my students What it is that I want them to do I give them clear criteria For how they are to approach this assignment But in fact we're always grading them As a member of a discipline Through which they have no access