Criticism

Criticism, at its very core, involves one person giving their own interpretation on the quality, or lack thereof, of someone else’s work. When thinking about criticism, two major categories come to mind. The first would be criticism which is purely commentary, usually negative, on someone else’s work. This criticism is not usually intended to be helpful and is simply expresses dislike of the way someone else is doing something. Additionally, the person whose work is in question may not ever even hear the criticism. An example of this would be criticizing the president concerning one of his policies. I would say that we can agree that this type of criticism is not really intended to be constructive, especially given that the president will most likely never hear what we say.

As already alluded to in the previous paragraph, the second category of criticism is constructive criticism, and that is to be the focus of this reflection. As the name suggests, constructive criticism is criticism offered to someone with the intent of helping them improve at something. Unfortunately, despite the best intentions of the critic, giving and receiving beneficial criticism can be quite a challenge. This is because, somewhat by definition, constructive criticism involves telling someone about something that they are doing incorrectly. While part of the criticism will probably involve telling the person about things they are doing correctly as well, there would really be no need for criticism if they were already perfect.

So, if we put ourselves in the perspective of the critic, before we can offer criticism, we must have some standard on which to base it. In my opinion, this is where criticism becomes very tricky. I think it is safe to say that in some cases, like a math problem, there is a well defined right answer, or right way of doing things. In this way offering criticism is relatively simple, as it merely involves showing the person the correct way to do things. Being an engineer, I feel that it would be relatively easy for me to offer criticism to my peers, in that I could sit down with them, check their answers, and if they missed any, show them the method to get to the correct answer.

However, I don’t think that this captures the true essence of criticism. I am not going to be distressed or upset if someone tells me I used the wrong equation; I will just fix the problem and move on. However, if someone tells me I need to do better at work, or become a better writer, I might find the criticism more difficult to accept. Why is this? I think that one explanation is the fact that the criticism is of a much more personal nature. Assuming that I always try to do my best, having someone tell me that I am doing poorly implies that my best isn’t good enough. I think another factor lies in the subjectivity of the criticism. Does the person criticizing my writing just not like my style? Is the manager just being overly picky? Is my choice of clothing really that bad?

What, then, is good criticism? Fundamentally, I would say that it is giving someone advice on how to do better in such a way that they feel compelled and motivated to take your advice. In order to be a good critic, you must have a previous knowledge of the subject on which to base your criticism. If the person being criticized knows that you are knowledgeable about the subject (i.e. aren’t just giving your personal opinion) it gives the criticism more credibility. In most cases, because the lines of goodness and badness aren’t explicitly defined, this knowledge comes from experience in the field. One example would be a manager giving an employee a performance review. Over time, the manager will have seen “good” and “bad” employees and will have a database of qualities on which to base the review. Another example is Professor Arvan’s reviews of our reflections. Being a very avid reader (at least from what I have observed), Prof. Arvan most likely has a very good sense of what “good” and “bad” writing looks like. Unfortunately this still doesn’t eliminate all of the subjectivity that can make criticism hard to accept.

Another major factor in being a good critic is being able to help the person see how they can improve. In the example I already gave about engineering, this would involve making sure the person I was helping understood how to correctly use the equations, where the equations came from, etc. A manager providing criticism to an employee should give specific examples for improvement. A professor grading a paper should give the student specific examples on how their writing could be better. I realize that this is a very left-brained way of thinking about this. Some people might be of the opinion that subtlety is better. That being said, I am describing how I would ideally like to be criticized, whereas someone might have a different opinion.

To summarize, constructive criticism involves helping someone see how they can improve on something. In some instances “right” and “wrong” are explicitly defined, making the criticism fairly straight forward, and in some ways, trivial. In general, though, “right” and “wrong” are less explicitly defined. A good critic then is one who has a deep knowledge of the material in question and can provide objective insight on methods for improvement. Finally, however profound or accurate the criticism may be, it is useless if it isn’t presented in a method which helps the person improve.