Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

I think, but am not sure, that the religious use of this word (the word "rubric) referred to the correct order of a religious service. For example, ought one confess one's sins before or after taking the sacrament of communion? That is a question of rubric.
Likewise, I think that the original use referred to a single letter, one that might start a chapter in a copy of the Bible.
How all of that morphed into how a student's work is evaluated is beyond me, though I now use them! My guess, and this is a total guess, is that educators, somewhere in the 60s, wanted a word that meant something like a standard, but didn't sound like that word.
Today, of course, the question is whether or not to pass the rubric on....
Allen