Fable
That exam paper that had to wait for the teacher to put pen to paper
Songguo Academy had a very fast grading machine. Multiple-choice questions, fill-in-the-blank questions, and arithmetic problems—it could grade them almost in the blink of an eye. In the past, teachers had to stay up late; now students could see their scores soon after handing in their papers.
At first, the academy wanted the grading machine to handle all exam papers. The machine did not get tired and was not biased, so it seemed more stable than humans. But when it came to essay class, problems appeared. One student wrote boldly, with novel views but loose structure; another wrote neatly but had almost no judgment of their own. The grading machine could only score by format, word count, and common expressions, and as a result rated the second essay higher.
The student was unconvinced, and the teacher was silent too. The machine was not broken; it simply had not truly understood what this exam was meant to test. An essay is not judged only on format, but also on judgment, evidence, risk, expression and growth.
The principal did not throw away the grading machine. He divided exam papers into three categories: first, questions with clear standard answers, which the machine grades directly; second, questions where the machine can give a preliminary assessment but a teacher must review; third, papers involving value judgments, student discipline, school recommendations, and scholarships, where the machine can only organize materials and a teacher must make the final call.
The role of the grading machine thus changed. It no longer pretends it can decide everything, but calculates the scores that should be calculated, marks suspicious answers, pulls up similar cases, and lists the scoring reasons for the teacher. The teacher also does not have to start from a blank page, but makes judgments on the materials the machine has prepared.
A student's answer once looked like plagiarism because it closely resembled an old paper. The machine flagged it in red, and under the old rules it might have been marked down outright. But after reviewing the process record, the teacher found that the student had cited public classroom materials and offered a new rebuttal at the end. The machine is responsible for spotting risk; the teacher is responsible for judging context.
After finals ended, the academy's grading speed did not return to what it was before, but quality became more stable. Because machines handled a large amount of deterministic work, people were placed in positions where someone must bear judgment, responsibility and explanation of exceptions.
Pinecone Academy later wrote this rule on the wall: not every paper needs to be graded by the teacher's own hand, but some marks must be made by a person.