Writing papers for REL 1300

The goal of writing papers for REL 1300 is to assess whether you have acquired the basic skills that are necessary for religious studies. The skills that are needed for religious studies are transferable skills: that is, they will be useful to you in areas other than religious studies, in fact, you will probably find that these skills are useful to you long after you have left university.

The aim of this work is for you to demonstrate that you can arrive at informed conclusions on questions concerning the development of some of the world's major religious traditions in their formative stages. The conclusions that you arrive at must be your conclusions. The whole point of a university education is that you learn how to think for yourself, not merely to repeat without understanding the conclusions of other people. Plagiarism will be strictly punished. The conclusions you arrive at must also be informed: you must demonstrate that you have read, and understood, relevant information.

The marks will be divided as follows:

Grammar: Mark out of 5. You should check your spelling, grammar and punctuation. A spellchecker on a word processor will help, but it won't always tell you whether you are using the right word (e.g. "weather" or "whether", "conscience" or "consciousness"), and won't always be able to tell whether you have a well-formed sentence or not. Be aware that you can only get credit for grammar if you have written a passage yourself: avoid excessive quotations for this reason.

Composition: Mark out of 5. Your essay should be well-planned. You will lose credit in this section if you repeat yourself unnecessarily, stray off the subject, spend a disproportionate amount of time on a relatively unimportant matter, or if the essay is just too short. For example, students often lose credit because they have a very long introduction in which they state that this is a difficult topic, that lots of people have written about it before, but nobody is really sure, and its hard to tell, etc. There is usually no need to say all of that: better to get to the interesting points. You will gain credit if you demonstrate that you can see how various topics are connected, and arrange the material in a way that reflects these connections. Essays that get full marks for composition are often divided into separate sections with sub-titles, but note that just because you have separate sections with sub-titles does not in any way guarantee a good mark for composition! You should think about what sections are needed, what will go in each section, and what order to present the sections in.
If you want to ensure a good mark for composition, make it very clear to me that you have spent time thinking about this: an introductory paragraph in which you tell me that the question is difficult is wasted. An introductory paragraph in which you explain the reasons why you have arranged the material in a particular way is almost certainly not wasted.

Use of sources:  Mark out of 10. In REL 1300, we will spend most of our time studying things that happened long ago and far away. We know about these events because there are sources that remain that tell us about them: books written by people who were there, archaeological evidence, or customs and traditions that have persisted through time. We are able to make sense of this evidence because of work done by other scholars.  Books can be translated, and commentators can explain the historical circumstances in which they were written. Archaeological sites can be surveyed, and the artefacts studied. Customs can be observed, and those who participate can be interviewed, and so on.
But sources must be used critically: not everything that is written in ancient documents is correct, and scholars who write text-books and encyclopaedia articles have made judgements about what is important, what is true, and what is the significance of the ancient documents. Such judgements might be good judgements, but they might be bad judgements, and it is your task to decide which. So, how do you go about sorting through sources?

First, it is extremely important that you understand the difference between primary sources and secondary sources. When you are investigating some historical event, the primary sources are the sources that get us directly in touch with that event, for example, reports written by eye-witnesses, skeletons on a battlefield, and so on. Secondary sources are written by other people who have examined the primary source material, and are offering their opinions or judgements. You should always try to make use of both primary and secondary sources, if possible.

Suppose that you heard two people talk about a baseball match. One thought that the winning team deserved to win, the other thought that they played badly, and were lucky to win. They ask you for your opinion. If you didn't watch the match, you're not able to form an opinion of your own, you just have to decide which other person to believe, without looking at the evidence. Your opinion will not be an informed opinion.

In this case, the obvious way to acquire an informed opinion would be to watch a video of the match. In the same way, when you are looking at the history of a religion, you should try to examine the primary  sources that put us directly in touch with the development of the religion, such as the sacred scriptures. Of course, you are not expected to read the whole of the scriptures of any religion that we study, this is a survey course. But you should try to read at least some - this is one reason why the text-book includes a set of readings for each religion, and why I supply photocopies of selected sources for you to read.

Returning to the baseball match, I have to admit that, if I were watching a baseball match, I would have difficulty distinguishing what was pure luck and what was the result of skill. I barely understand the rules of baseball. It would help me if there were someone who does understand the game well to explain it to me. This is one reason why sports channels employ commentators, to explain the finer points of the game to spectators. In the same way, when you are reading the primary texts of a religion, you probably won't be able to understand everything. You need advice from people who know the religion and its history well, this is why we turn to secondary sources, such as the text-book, encyclopaedias etc. These are not substitutes for reading the primary sources, but they are a necessary supplement. Frequently, they will be able to refer you to passages in the primary sources that are worth studying, and to explain why some primary sources are c considered more trustworthy than others.

Of course, sports commentators often disagree with each other, and that is one reason why its useful to have two commentators. If they agree, they are probably right, but not necessarily, but if even the experts disagree, that is a sign that there is something interesting and difficult to understand, which might be worth investigating further. For this reason, it is worthwhile checking out a few secondary sources, notice where they agree, and where they disagree.
If they disagree, you should ask yourself why. Returning to the analogy with a baseball match, perhaps one of the commentators is a big fan of the New York Yankees, and, whenever his team does well, he thinks it is because of the skill of the players, but whenever they do badly, it is because of bad luck. Once you realize this, you know not to take too much notice if this commentator blames the Yankees' defeat on bad luck. In the same way, you should ask yourself whether your sources show any bias, whether there is any point that they are trying to prove, and whether perhaps they manipulate the evidence to support their conclusions.

The whole process of sorting through sources is a long and sometimes difficult one. In order to get full credit for your hard work, make sure that it is apparent to me when I grade the paper. Don't just repeat what is written in a source: summarize it, then explain whether you agree or disagree and why: are you taking on board information from a recognised expert in the field, such as a university professor, or is it just from the first web-site that you found on google? If the answer is the former, then why not mention who the person is, and what their qualifications are, to demonstrate that you've taken some trouble. Even if your source is a university professor, that does not mean that everything they say is correct: remember that we professors hope to make a reputation for ourselves by making exciting discoveries. We will frequently make claims that cannot really be supported by the evidence because they fit some theory we want to prove - so, when you are assessing the value of a secondary source, ask yourself whether the writer of that secondary source demonstrates that their ideas really are supported by the primary sources. Just as I will grade you for your use of sources, you should grade your secondary sources for their use of primary source material.

"One of the worst things of all about subservience to secondary literature is that it means absorbing wholesale the mistakes of others, when it is bad enough having unavoidably to make one's own." (Bryan Magee, Confessions of a Philosopher, p.242)

Always give a source for your information, at the very point in the essay where the information is included. It is not sufficient to include a bibliography at the end: from a bibliography, I cannot tell which source you were using at any particular point in the paper. Even if the information seems obvious, you should give the source in a footnote, or in parentheses. For example, it used to be widely accepted that the Buddha's dates were 566-486 B.C.E., but now many scholars think his dates were 448-368. You might find that an older edition of an encyclopaedia gives only the first set of dates, and if you read just that as a source, you would probably think that it is common knowledge that the Buddha's dates were 566-486, and put that in your paper. So, even for a case like that, include a footnote giving the source, which should include a date of publication. If all of your secondary sources are quite old, it may well be that you have missed out on a lot of recent discoveries!

As you progress in your studies, you will learn when it is safe to give information without a source, but it is much better to give unnecessary references at this stage, and develop good scholarly habits than not to give references when you should and receive an F for plagiarism. It is much better that, when you study a higher level course, you are told "That's common knowledge, no need to give a reference" than to be told at this stage "You didn't give references, you get an F."

Understanding:  Mark out of 10.

To understand the development of a religion, it is not sufficient to know what happened. You should also be able to explain why things happened, and to appreciate whether what happened was good or bad.

To understand why a religion developed in one way, you should consider the possible motives of the followers of the religion. What role did social forces, economic, political and military play in the development of the religion? In what way did religious factors influence the intellectual, legal and artistic history of a community?

Secondary sources often contain helpful suggestions on these matters, and you should consider whether you accept what they say. In order to arrive at judgments like this, it is helpful to have some general ideas about the relationship between, for example, religion and politics. Of course, it is only possible to arrive a theory about the relationship between religion and politics after you have studied several different societies. As you progress through the course, your ability to make such judgements should improve, because you will have more knowledge to draw on. Your understanding of these issues will be enhanced if you can compare and contrast different religions, asking what are the reasons for the differences between them.

Skill in the use of sources and the ability to explain social developments are both transferable skills: they will be useful to you long after you graduate. But there is a particular benefit from learning how to apply these skills to religious questions. Religions are an important part of the reality of 21st Century life, and, in order to make important decisions concerning to society, it is necessary to consider how to deal with certain religious issues. It should be clear after September 11th that religion can be a major source of good and evil in contemporary society. If that is so, we need to be able to evaluate religious movements, to see what is good and what is bad about them.

I should make it clear, that I am not trying to impose my own values and value judgements on you. However, I know from experience that many students will include such judgements in their essays anyway, and I think it important that this be done well. Value judgements should be based on accurate information, and a proper understanding. They should be based on an ability to appreciate different points of view, even though there will be some points of view that you reject as being mistaken.

To explain this further, let me give an example of bad understanding and good understanding:

Poor understanding:

Members of Al Qaida who launched an attack on the World Trade Center obviously did not understand that religion and politics are separate. Religion is personal, and you shouldn't attack someone just because they disagree with your religion. Unfortunately, lots of Muslims make this mistake, perhaps because Muhammad was a political leader as well as being a prophet.

Better understanding:

It is an interesting question why religion became separated from politics in the Christian West, but not in the Muslim world. Both Jesus and Muhammad had a vision of a just society. Muhammad succeeded in gaining control of his society, and he and his followers set about putting his vision of a just society into action. Jesus never gained control of his society, either because he did not want to, or because he did not succeed. In the formative years of Christianity, Christians were a distrusted minority seeking to be tolerated. They emphasised that they had no desire to overthrow the state, whose function was to maintain social order, and so it was that it became possible to see the Christian religion as something separate from politics. Of course, not all Christians have desired such a separation, and the Christian Churches have played an important role in political history, but it was at least possible to articulate a theory that separated religion from politics and, after the reformation, this theory gained wide acceptance, particularly in the United States. One response to militant Islam would be to propose that  Muslims should separate religion from politics in the same way that many Christians do, but then why should Muslims accept this Christian understanding of the proper role of a religion? A better strategy might be to discourage the excesses of militant Islam by appealing to the values of the Quran, using it as a political document (which, in part, it surely is), and quoting it against the likes of Osama bin Laden. This approach may be more difficult, but has a better chance of winning the hearts and minds of Muslims.

You should be aiming to write things more like the second paragraph than the first. Incidentally, you have entirely missed the point of this whole handout if you think that the way to get an A is to state in your paper that you agree with what is in the second paragraph: this paragraph is just another secondary source, which you should be able to evaluate, accept, reject or perhaps accept in part and reject in part.

Total mark: The total mark for any one paper is out of 30. Your best two papers will, together, count for 60% of the final grade. The only exception is if you are guilty of plagiarism: in that case, your paper will receive 0/30, and this mark will count towards the final grade. For a second offense you will fail the course automatically. For more information see my notes on plagiarism.

One third of the marks for each paper are awarded for your generic essay writings skills, grammar and composition. If you lack these skills, you should take Freshman Composition. Two thirds of the marks are awarded for more subject-specific skills, use of sources and understanding. Before you write a paper, think about how you can demonstrate that you have these skills in what you write: if there is no indication that you have thought at all about your use of sources, or no attempt to show a deeper understanding, then I will not give you any credit at all, and you will fail.

If you do follow these instructions, you are still not guaranteed an A, or even a B: it takes practice to acquire these skills, and on the way, you will make mistakes. When you get your paper back, look at the breakdown of the mark. Check that I have added the scores correctly, and if you think you deserve a higher score, come to see me and talk about it. If I think that I have made an error, I will modify your score (perhaps yours was the last paper I graded at the end of a long hard day when I was feeling tired and miserable). Even if I don't modify your score (and it is not very often that I do so), I will explain in more detail what is wrong with your work, so that you can improve next time. These skills are worth having, but they are difficult to acquire. The only way you will acquire them is if you learn from your mistakes, and if you have an incentive to improve - the prospect of getting a B or, if you are an extremely intelligent student and you work very hard, an A.

Is there an element of subjectivity in my grading? Of course. For example, you lose marks for composition if you spend a disproportionate amount of time writing about what is less important, but I have to decide what counts as unimportant, and what is disproportionate. You lose marks if you place too much uncritical trust in unreliable sources, but I have to decide whether you are too trusting, and whether the source is well-chosen or not. There is, unfortunately, no way to teach you these skills without having someone like me make this kind of judgement. It would be an improvement if several professors could form a committee to grade papers, but that is not possible on this campus. Even with a committee, it would still be a matter of subjective judgement by several professors rather than by just one.  By using referring to this handout, and to the comments that you receive on your papers, it should be possible for you to figure out the kind of thinking that is required to get a good grade, and if you don't do so well on your first papers, remember that you are here to learn. I honestly think that I learned more from those occasions when I received a lower grade than I expected for a piece of work: and very often when I was a student, the work that I thought was my best was, in fact, my worst, because I had completely overlooked some important point.


As with most other subjects, if you work hard, you might find that you start to enjoy it, and to improve your grade.

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