Chapter five of the Second Treatise is where many student essays fall apart. Locke argues that a person owns the labor of their body, and that mixing labor with something in the common state of nature makes it private property. Students often repeat this idea confidently and then apply it carelessly, forgetting the limits Locke attaches to it. Feedback on these essays works best when it targets those specific gaps.

Begin by confirming that the student understands the starting point. Locke says the earth was given to humankind in common, so private ownership needs a justification, and labor is the answer he offers. Essays that skip this setup usually treat property as a natural fact and miss how radical the question was. A brief comment such as asking what problem the labor argument is meant to solve helps students reframe their opening paragraph.

Next, look for the two famous limits: the sufficiency condition and the spoilage limit. The first says a person may appropriate only if enough and as good is left for others, and the second says no one may take more than they can use before it spoils. Students who mention only one of these tend to write as if Locke endorses unlimited accumulation. Pointing them back to the text often fixes the misreading immediately.

The Money Problem Students Often Skip

The most interesting move in the chapter comes when Locke introduces money. Because gold and silver do not spoil, people can accumulate far more than they could ever consume without breaking the spoilage limit, and Locke says they consent to this arrangement. Strong essays notice that this changes the moral picture of property considerably. Weaker essays quote the early passages about acorns and apples and never reach the section on money.

• Praise essays that explain why labor creates a claim against the common stock
• Flag essays that ignore the spoilage limit or treat it as a minor detail
• Ask students to test the sufficiency condition against a crowded, land-scarce society
• Challenge claims that Locke defends unlimited wealth without addressing money and consent
• Reward students who separate Locke's argument from later capitalist interpretations of it

Comments That Actually Help

A weak comment says unclear or needs more support beside a paragraph about mixing labor. A stronger comment identifies the exact gap, such as asking how a hunter's claim to a deer differs from a gatherer's claim to the whole meadow. The second kind of comment gives the student a scenario to reason through, which is far more likely to produce a better paragraph on the next pass. It also shows that the teacher read closely.

It also helps to distinguish confusion about Locke from confusion about writing. A student who writes a muddled sentence about ownership might understand the idea but lack the phrasing, or might not understand it at all. A quick question, like asking the student to restate the point in one plain sentence, reveals which problem you are dealing with. That saves you from marking a language problem as a comprehension problem.

Encouraging Critical Engagement

Advanced students should be pushed to evaluate the theory, not just explain it. Does labor really justify ownership when it is the labor of a servant or when the land was already inhabited? Locke's own text hints at these questions in his remarks about servants' work and about the Americas, and thoughtful essays take them up. Even when a student's critique is imperfect, feedback should acknowledge the attempt and refine it.

Modern applications can also spark good writing if handled carefully. Students might consider whether Locke's reasoning supports claims about intellectual property, digital assets, or the ownership of land by large corporations. The risk is that these comparisons become shallow, so the rubric should still require textual support for every claim about what Locke would say. Feedback can remind students that speculation is welcome only when it is grounded in his stated principles.

Making Feedback Manageable

Writing detailed, specific comments on every paper is the ideal but rarely realistic for a teacher with 120 students. One approach is to build a comment bank of your most common notes on chapter five, then customize each one with a phrase from the student's own essay. Rubric-based tools like GraideMind can draft this kind of targeted feedback so you can review and adjust it instead of starting from scratch. The goal is comments precise enough that students know what to do next.

Whichever approach you choose, keep the number of comments per essay small. Three to five well-chosen notes are more useful than fifteen scattered ones, and students are more likely to act on them. On property essays specifically, focus on the limits, the money passage, and the strength of the student's own argument. Those three areas capture most of what separates a competent essay from an excellent one.