Comparing perspectives and showing discernment
The comparison is where the standard is won
- Two perspectives explained side by side is Achieved. They have been interpreted, accurately, with evidence.
- Merit is depth — each perspective understood thoroughly, with relevant evidence for all five of its parts.
- Excellence is depth and discernment. Discernment is judgement between the perspectives, and it is the only word in the descriptor that is not about a single perspective.
- Adding a third perspective is coverage, not discernment. Two, compared properly, outscore four listed.
The three forms discernment takes
- Which is better evidenced. One perspective may rest on a single letter and another on a vote, a campaign and a subscription list. Saying so, with the reason, is a judgement about your own evidence — and it is the easiest of the three.
- Which is more representative. One person's view may or may not stand for a group. A perspective evidenced by collective action is more representative than one evidenced by an individual's words, whatever the eloquence.
- What accounts for the difference. Why did two people in the same place at the same time see it differently? This is the strongest form, and it is where the real historical work is.
Explaining what accounts for a difference
- Different interests. They had different things at stake — money, position, land, employment, standing.
- Different information. They knew different things, or knew them at different times. A perspective formed before a fact was public is not the same as one formed after.
- Different experience. What had happened to them before shaped what the event looked like.
- Different assumptions about how the world works. The deepest kind, and the hardest to see, because assumptions are rarely stated.
- Different questions. Especially between historians — two people can agree on all the evidence and differ because they are explaining different things.
- Name which of these you are claiming, and evidence it. He signed himself as a ratepayer of twenty years, which is a claim to standing based on payment is evidence about interest.
Disagreement about facts, meaning, or what should follow
- These are three different kinds of disagreement, and identifying which you have is a depth move.
- About facts — they disagreed about what happened or what was true. Resolvable in principle, and often the least interesting.
- About meaning — they agreed on the facts and differed on what those facts amounted to. Common, and usually where the real disagreement lies.
- About what should follow — they agreed on the facts and on their meaning, and differed on what ought to be done. This is a disagreement about values, and it is not resolvable by evidence.
- Most disagreements that look factual turn out to be about meaning, and saying so is one of the most useful sentences a submission can contain.
What two opposed perspectives share
- Look for the ground both sides accepted. When people who disagree about everything argue on the same terrain, that terrain is not in dispute — it is the period's shared assumption, and it is invisible to everyone inside it.
- Look for the argument neither made. A case available to both and used by neither is strong evidence about what would not have worked on their shared audience.
- This is a discernment move, because it is a judgement about both perspectives at once, establishing the boundary of their disagreement.
- It is also usually the most original thing a submission can say, because it is not stated in any source — it emerges only from the comparison.
Comparing historians
- Two historians disagreeing is a ready-made pair, and the interpretive question is what accounts for it.
- Three usual answers: they had different evidence (check the footnotes and the publication dates); they were explaining different things; or they weight the same evidence differently because their questions differ.
- Do not resolve a historians' disagreement by preferring the more recent. Later is not better; later has more evidence available and different questions in fashion. Say which applies.
- Two historians read properly beat six names listed. Quoting a historian's conclusion adds authority; explaining their reasoning adds analysis, and only the second is what the standard asks for.
Worked Example
Worked example
A student has two perspectives on the Waipuna borough dispute (invented):
- Perspective A: the 1906 ratepayer opposed to women standing, arguing from commercial competence.
- Perspective B: Renwick's 1911 campaign committee, arguing from nine years of committee service.
Write the comparison paragraph.
Answer:
Step 1 — which is better evidenced? B is the better evidenced of the two. It rests on a printed handbill, an organised campaign and a candidacy recorded in the election results — three independent traces of the same position. A rests on a single letter, published under a pseudonym. So I can be confident about what B's supporters argued and only about what one member of A's camp chose to write.
Step 2 — which is more representative? Neither is straightforwardly representative, and they fail differently. A is one person, self-selected by being willing to write to a newspaper — a group more confident and more literate than the average ratepayer. B is a committee, so it speaks for more than one person, but a campaign committee's public case is chosen for effect and may not be what its members privately held. The election results are the better evidence of how widely each was shared: Renwick stood and lost, so B's position was a minority one in 1911, which A's letter cannot tell me about A.
Step 3 — what accounts for the difference? The obvious answer is interest, and it is only partly right. A signs as a ratepayer of twenty years, claiming standing from payment, and he has a direct financial stake in who controls borough spending. But B's supporters were ratepayers too. The better account is different assumptions about what qualifies a person: A treats commercial experience as the relevant proof of competence, B treats sustained unpaid public service as an equivalent proof. They are not disagreeing about whether competence matters; they are disagreeing about what counts as evidence of it.
Step 4 — name the kind of disagreement. That makes this a disagreement about meaning, not about facts. Neither disputes that Renwick served nine years on the Hospital Ladies' Committee; they differ on whether that experience is the same kind of thing as running a business.
Step 5 — what they shared, which is the strongest observation available. Both argue that a council seat must be earned by demonstrated competence. Neither argues from rights, and neither argues from equality, though women had voted nationally since 1893 and the argument was available to both. When two opposed sides decline the same argument, the best explanation is that it would not have worked on their shared audience — so the boundary of the Waipuna disagreement was narrower than it appears, and the contest was about what counted as qualification, not about whether qualification was the test.