No one could have described the Master’s face as handsome or noble. It was indeed a common sort of face, with no single great feature of great merit. The ears, for instance – the lobes looked as if they had been smashed.

– The Master of Go

Linguistic processing alone cannot determine the truth or falsity of assertions, but we could direct the system’s attention to statements that are objectively presented, to lessen distractions from opinionated, speculative, and evaluative language.

– Creating Subjective and Objective Sentence Classifiers from Unannotated Texts

Would you ask a barber if you need a haircut? How is that different from asking a doctor if you are in need of treatment? What is a medical opinion? How do opinions vary from facts? Can experts differ in their objective evaluations and if they can, are they being subjective? Is objective good and subjective bad?

The English Syllabus 2020 aims to enable students to be Empathetic Communicators, Discerning Readers and Creative Inquirers and develop in them core values of Respect, Responsibility, Resilience, Integrity, Care and Harmony. These outcomes and values were selected for particular focus based on an understanding of what it would take to succeed in the 21st century which many have characterised to be an era of constant change wrought by key drivers with potential to rapidly alter entire landscapes at every level.

Empathetic communication has been described as ability to “communicate confidently, effectively and sensitively while collaborating with others” with an “appreciation of multi-ethnic and multi-cultural sensitivities”. A discerning reader has been described to be “able to distinguish fact from falsehood by processing and evaluating information, critically and with discernment”. A creative inquirer is able to “explore and evaluate real-world issues and multiple perspectives”.

The syllabus makes clear the need for students to understand the difference between fact and opinion whether in reading, writing, speaking or listening. This makes concepts like objective and subjective relevant. They need to know how to come across ‘confident’ and yet circumspect. They need to understand when a text with objective words is actually subjective and to discern fact from very confident sounding opinion.

One reason we hear so much of impending change on all fronts is technological advancement which in essence enables anyone anywhere to do more than they used to be able to and therefore effect change. There is profound disintermediation which has diminished relevance of concepts like gatekeeping and has now conferred on gatekeepers the more subdued role of gate watchers. There is less need to consult, exclusively rely on or go through a human being on any matter.

The upside of this is more participation, autonomy and choice. The downsides are aplenty and have been mitigated all over the world through measures such as fake news legislation and campaigns to raise awareness of spin doctors, other sleek charlatans with winning smiles, deep fakes, bots and of course education starting when students are young.

An avenue to exercise ability to distinguish between objective and subjective statements is peer review and the more controversial concept of peer assessment. A peer review is conducted when one student evaluates a peer’s work and comments on it with a view to persuading the other to take some action to improve. Peer assessment goes further to allow students to determine at least in part the summative (final evaluation which counts) grade of their peers.

While the mode has been championed for lending itself to, “higher order reasoning and higher level cognitive thought”, “active and flexible learning”, “a deep approach to learning” and development of “relevant skills and interpersonal relationships” (Cheng & Warren, Peer Assessment of Language Proficiency), students themselves have not been as starry-eyed in their evaluation.

For example, when Zhou, Zheng and Tai (2019) set out to investigate emotional impact of the process in the context of English writing tasks, the following was said:

a) The review wrote comments like ‘lack of logic coherence’ and ‘no sign of effective use of cohesive devices’. The feedback was no more than direct copying from expressions in the rubric.
b) The reviewer highlighted many sentences and claimed there were grammatical errors. I disagree with some highlighted content.
c) The reviewer used many questions in his comment on the dimension of ‘vocabulary and grammatical control’. I feel he was uncertain about what he had said. I’m dubious about his judgement, too.
d) I think some students didn’t pay enough respect to other people’s work and gave comments and grades very subjectively.

The reader presented with the above would have reason to believe there has been an objective presentation within this article, of how students felt about peer assessment. Readers might believe students do not like peer assessment. If it stopped here, this would be a good example of how objective looking presentation is actually subjective. In fact, students in the same research also said the following:

a) Applying the scoring rubrics when reviewing is a way to learn what makes a piece of writing good and what makes one dissatisfactory. When judging other’s works, I will also reflect upon my own writing. I will try to recall whether I have made the same mistakes in my own writing.
b) I have a deeper understanding… This process greatly improved my own analysing ability. It carried great benefits to my own writing.

Also, ‘not as starry eyed’ in itself is not the same thing as ‘did not find useful in the least’. The foregoing digression illustrates not just how every word in any article but also the arrangement of facts therein, is a product of selection and is contingent on the lens one wears and his own agenda (not always a bad word) or what he wishes to impress upon readers. In this sense, all writing (including feedback in any format) is necessarily subjective. Different people looking at the same work might choose to interpret lines differently, focus on different aspects or even when focusing on the same aspects, choose to assign different weights or significance as to the impact of discrete segments on the whole.

This does not mean that the reader is entirely responsible and the communicator is now let off the hook because everything is a matter of interpretation. A peer reviewer or a commentator on a social media platform will have to be responsible, show integrity and respect because in the 21st century anyone has the potential to disrupt harmony between classmates or between entire communities because of democratizing trends in and outside the classroom. This is where empathetic communication is needed. Indeed, Zhou et al. (2019) found even negative feedback was positively received when the reviewer came across respectful, “I found those reviewers gave very detailed feedback; even some corrected my grammar mistakes. Thank them for spending time correcting in detail. Thus I accepted my marks without resistance”.

Objectivity has been described as, “fact-based, measurable and observable” and its counterpart as “personal opinions, interpretations, points of view, emotions and judgment” (diffen.com). To increase objectivity or reduce perceptions of subjectivity, efforts such as rubrics in the context of writing and measures such as increasing the number of reviewers in other domains have been introduced.

Researchers have pointed out the shortcomings of rubrics and have described them as “a useful step forward” with “key limitations” such as “subjectivity and ambiguity of language they contain” (Schenck & Daly, 2012). Experiments have been done to show that when an item has already received a positive review, it would continue to receive positive reviews. There would be cognitive dissonance and social cost in reviewing poorly a well reputed student even when there is clear evidence to support a negative review. Numbers activate psychological phenomena such as social proof (Cialdini, 2007) but do not necessarily add to credibility. Subjectivity might be a permanent feature of reviews of any kind.

This brings us to the objectives of democracy and mechanisms such as peer reviews which embody its principles. Is it possible to be objective in a subjective way so as to effect a positive change as opposed to resistance and negative emotion?

The Pygmalion or Rosenthal effect documents how students live up or down to expectations. There is no reason to believe this does not also apply to adults. When reviewing a performance or piece of work, is it more important to ensure the receiver of feedback continues to grow and enjoy the process or is it more important that each and very attempt be compared against some ideal such that the flaws stand out in sharp focus?

If a student has written a story or made an oral presentation, a reviewer could be objective in identifying strengths and subjective in amplifying these instead of shortcomings in delivering feedback. This would motivate receivers for their effort, enhance their self-concept and result in an enduring passion for the field of endeavour.

Telling a student, you are great in all these areas or in this one area and if you just make these few minor changes, you will be exceptional, fuels him for the herculean effort required in deliberate practice.

As John Berger in Ways of Seeing writes, “To look is an act of choice”. In other words, it is subjective. A good eye is not one which is sharp to spot flaws, but one which has the power to alter objective reality through its subjective appreciation of what it sees.

The Brain Dojo