Show Your Work

I remember homework or exam instructions, especially for math and science, always including a requirement to ‘show your work’.

While annoying at times, it was obviously for a good reason.

While the final solution was important, it could easily be copied, or even guessed.

So we required students to show their work because it’s the knowledge of the process that is truly critical.

If the student understood the process, then it didn’t matter if the variables changed. They still had the knowledge required to figure out the right solution.

Showing their work proved that they knew how to solve the problems regardless of the variables.

Another version of that instruction was ‘support your opinion’. This was more often in a literature or social sciences essay. You needed to be able to back up your main argument with relevant examples and logical reasoning.

But within this example, it was not the ‘state your opinion’ portion that gave you full credit. Rather, it was the ‘support your opinion’ that determined your score.

For example, suppose the essay question asked, ‘In your opinion, who is America’s greatest founding father? Provide one reason.’

Student A: ‘I think Thomas Jefferson is our greatest founding father because he was the first president of our country.’

Student B: ‘I think George Washington is our greatest founding father because he discovered America.’

In both of these example answers, the opinion is not the incorrect part. It is quite possible for different people to list either Thomas Jefferson or George Washington as the greatest founding father.

But, the supporting reasons are tragically false, which makes the entire response invalid.

Different opinions are acceptable, but only if the supporting evidence or reasoning provided is reasonable or objectively true.

. . . . .

It seems that, somewhere along the way, adults forget about these simple instructions. As if the same rules don’t apply if we’re not sitting in a classroom.

But they do, and we need to re-introduce these concepts into our daily conversations.

Just because you have an opinion doesn’t mean I have to respect it.

If your argument wouldn’t pass in a 7th grade classroom, then it doesn’t pass with me either.

Support your opinion. Show your work.