Planning the submission and making the judgement
The order of work
- 1. Find a divergence, and check both sides are documented. Without independent evidence for each perspective, the topic fails before anything is written.
- 2. Name where the contest lies — origins, nature, or consequences.
- 3. Write the question the two perspectives answer differently. One sentence. If you cannot, you have one perspective and one variation.
- 4. Establish what both perspectives agree on. Whatever remains is the contested part, and stating the agreement isolates it.
- 5. Explain each perspective, naming at least three of the four inputs — information, interests, assumptions, position.
- 6. Identify what changed between them, if they are separated in time: new evidence, new questions, changed assumptions, or changed interests.
- 7. Make the judgement, on one of the three legitimate grounds.
- 8. Answer the objection to your judgement.
The three legitimate grounds, restated as questions
- Better informed — did one perspective have access to evidence the other lacked, or use available evidence more fully?
- More internally consistent — does one perspective account for more of what its own holders knew?
- Fewer untested assumptions — does one rest on fewer claims its holders never examined?
- The single test that all three pass and hindsight fails: would my reason still hold if nothing had been learned since?
- If the reason evaporates without hindsight, it was hindsight all along.
Writing the judgement
- Four moves, in this order:
- State the preference. I find the [X] perspective the more historically valid.
- Name the ground, explicitly, as one of the three.
- Show it applying — the specific assumption that was untested, the specific evidence that was available and unused, the specific inconsistency.
- Refuse the illegitimate ground out loud. This is not because it is closer to what we now believe. Saying so demonstrates you know the difference, which an assessor cannot otherwise infer.
- Merit needs the first three. The fourth, plus an answered objection, is where Excellence lives.
Answering the objection to a judgement about perspectives
- There is one objection that arises in almost every submission, and it is worth preparing: that judging a past perspective at all is anachronistic.
- The answer has two parts, and both are needed:
- Grant it against the wrong target. The objection has real force against a claim that people should have acted differently, which is a moral verdict.
- Deny it against the right one. It has much less force against a claim that a perspective rested on an assumption its holders could have examined and did not — because that criticism was available at the time.
- The distinction is the whole of the answer, and it is why the ground you chose in the previous step determines whether you can answer the objection at all.
Self-marking against the descriptors
| Check | The phrase it tests |
|---|---|
| Can I state one question my two perspectives answer differently? | different perspectives... contested event |
| Would each side recognise my account of their view? | explaining, as an historian |
| Have I named three of the four inputs for each? | reasons for these |
| Have I stated a preference, not a survey? | appraising and presenting an opinion (Merit) |
| Would my ground still hold if nothing had been learned since? | historical validity |
| Have I stated and answered the anachronism objection? | judgements... thorough engagement with the evidence (Excellence) |
Worked Example
Worked example
Note: the Riversdale Flats Drainage Scheme is an INVENTED case, and any historians referred to are invented.
A student has explained both perspectives fairly and must now judge. They draft three versions of the judgement. Which meets which grade?
Version A:
Version B:
Version C:
Answer:
Step 1 — assess Version A.
It explains both perspectives and refuses to choose. The standard's Merit definition is evaluating involves appraising and presenting an opinion.
No opinion is presented. This is Achieved, however well the earlier explanation was done. It is the relativist retreat, and it is the commonest ceiling in this standard.
Step 2 — assess Version B.
An opinion is presented, so it clears the bar Version A failed.
But the ground is hindsight — we now recognise. This is the illegitimate ground, and it converts the analysis into a progress narrative: the later view is right, the earlier one failed to see what we see. One perspective analysed, one dismissed.
It also cannot survive the anachronism objection, because it is straightforwardly anachronistic. Merit at best, and vulnerable.
Step 3 — assess Version C's first paragraph.
- A preference is stated.
- The ground is named explicitly — an untested assumption, which is one of the three legitimate ones.
- It is shown applying, with specifics: a rating classification used beyond its stated purpose.
- And the criticism is internal. Available in 1955 to anyone who looked at what the classification was for. Nothing learned since is doing any work.
Step 4 — note the second paragraph.
The illegitimate ground is refused out loud. Eleven words. An assessor cannot otherwise tell whether the student knows the difference or has arrived at a legitimate ground by luck.
Step 5 — note the third paragraph, which is the Excellence move.
The anachronism objection is stated at full strength and then split.
- Granted against a claim about what the council should have done — and the concession is real, not a straw version.
- Denied against the claim actually made, with the reason: the criticism is internal to the council's own reasoning rather than imported from later values.
Step 6 — note why the split was available at all.
Only because the ground chosen in Step 3 was an internal one. Version B could not have written this paragraph, because its ground is an imported later value and the objection would simply land.