On Wrong Answers In Art

S:

I’m trying to make a much simpler point.  It’s a test of knowledge.  The student is entitled to his own subjective opinion but not to his own subjective ‘knowledge’ if his interpretation of the key thereof Lear say is different from the curriculum being tested (and surely the key theme of Lear would be on the course curriculum) he fails the question whatever his interpretation.  That’s different than art.

So maybe I’m hung up on the particular exam example.  

The saying went about the notoriously difficult CFA examination, that there’s a right answer, there’s a wrong answer, and there’s the CFA Institute answer.  Even if you thought you had the right answer, you only got credit for the CFA Institute answer

Me:

Not clear on your simpler point.

In the domains I know best, law and literature, what counts as knowledge and what’s being “tested” qua grading—for literature probably starting in the senior high school grades and then up—is not so much knowledge in the sense of answering fact based questions. What’s wanted is the ability to interpret the taught texts, ie, interpretive ability. 

Now you could argue that since in the study of cases or works you’re taught what the cases stand for and what works may mean so that all that then becomes knowledge. So on exams to be able to give that information/knowledge back in a workmanlike way will get you a workmanlike grade. 

There’s something to that.

But in neither discipline is it quite that straightforward. 

In law school exams, you’re typically given fact situations that you analyze with what the cases says. You show your ability pretty quickly to apply the cases. Competent students will spot the issues that then provide them with a means of showing they understand the cases. A better student’s analysis will be sharper, subtler and more incisive. A superior student might have fresh insights or will be able to put the principles together in very creative ways.

Literature exams I are more on point to the point I’m trying to argue, which is that in art, interpretation can be distinguished from factual knowledge and can be erroneous.

Typically, English exams ask students to discuss work(s) given a certain general proposition or to compare works from a certain point of view. Classroom discussion will hopefully help students understand the works well enough to meet the challenge of discussing them from new perspectives on the spot. 

When English students are graded on essays, they will have to—among other things—at a minimum offer a supported view of work(s) coming with a plausible range of what they might mean. It’s entirely possible and not uncommon that As might be given to opposing interpretations of a work. 

To make a long story shorter, in both disciplines students will do poorly or fail if what they say about the material, the cases or the literary works, is so off base, so insupportable, that it’s WRONG—with emphasis on wrong—and not only wrong but I argue objectively wrong. 

So I don’t think schools testing and grading about taught works is different from apprehending art. This testing and grading in is, in my opinion, a more rigorous, focussed example of what people do when they informally discuss art.

 For behind those discussions is texts’ demand that they be respected by being adhered to and, so, not distorted. In such discussions typically no arbiters, expert in the work, tell the discussants the way it is. To be clear, the way it is can accommodate a wide variety of views, but in principle will oust views that are plain wrong.

If English professors are worth their salt, there will be no one right answer as to the meaning of a work, but there can be plenty of wrong answers.