The Socratic Method...
Part III of JP's expose on law school...
Before I begin, I plan on doing a ‘what annoys me’ list soon. This week is going to be a busy one for me, as I have to play fake lawyer this week. But since it is Saturday morning and there are no good cartoons on anymore, I finally had a chance to write the next chapter on law school myths, and that is the Socratic Method.
For those of you unfamiliar with the lecture style in law school, the professor basically stands up front, asks about so and so case, but instead of just calling on people with their hands raised, he will call on someone at random to tell about the case, change the facts a bit, and ask new questions. It got the name Socratic Method because I guess when Socrates was not making little boy love, he used to grill them another way, by peppering them with questions about life or something to prove his points. I dunno, that Socrates had some sick ideas about foreplay, and I guess some sick ideas about who his life partners should be. The Greek elders liked Socrates and his teachings style so much, that they made him drink poison to shut him up.
Still, thousands of years later, somebody somewhere decided to adopt Socrates ideas on teaching. Luckily, they didn’t adopt his ideas about little boy love. Either way, this Socratic Method has brought fear in the eyes of many incoming law students. The idea of being called on at random, to answer questions, having to be put on the spot to match wits with a seasoned legal scholar in front of 100 people brings great trepidation to potential law students. They hyperventilate in the bathroom before class. They scurry to read cases and reread them right before class. They have 5 different colored highlighters to color coat their primary point, their secondary points, the weak points, then negative points, and another highlighter to write in big letters “DON’T PANIC.” The idea is that if you survive a series of being called on by the professor, people will talk about you as being smart. Fumble and you will look like an idiot who is probably going to fail out. In my first year, people used to talk about who got called on and how they did. “Oh man, Sean really got flustered up there; I can’t believe he thought the rationale in that case hinged on zone of danger rather than proximate causation. HE’S SO NOT GOING TO BE IN MY STUDY GROUP” (side note - that just reminded me to do a part on study groups). Or on the flip side “Wow, did you see how Mike handled that Personal Jurisdiction hypothetical, he must be reading supplements and researching the cases in the footnotes, I better start studying harder, otherwise I am going to be on the tail end of the bell curve.”
Yes, the Socratic Method has caused many nights of upset stomachs, the jitters and even severe cases of diarrhea. But ladies and germs, it does not have to be this way. Rather than let the great and powerful professor get up there, thinking he is a cross between Johnny Carson and Einstein at an interrogation, law students can control the power. If they just realized, it’s all a myth. The problem with the Socratic Method, the kink in the armor, what makes this competitive game show of being called on one big myth is the concept of anonymous grading. Let me explain, since grades are anonymous, you can get called on, tell the professor “pass” “I didn’t read for class” “call on someone else” “ I played with your wife’s watermelons last night” “I got a really bad case of jock itch” and it won’t affect your grade at all. Sure at some point you have to learn the material, but there is no point in having a steady cram session for 4 months. Tell the professor you would rather be playing solitaire, zone out, veg out, whatever. Insult him, tell him you were falling asleep and not paying attention. Do whatever you want, because law school does not matter till finals start. It’s like this 14 week time filler where professors get to try and beat up students, while the kiddies all stress and kill themselves trying to look smart in class. Then you get to the final, and all the 14 weeks worth of nonsense is replaced by 100 True False questions that had nothing to do with what you learned in class, and a couple of essays you can BS through.
In all fairness, I should disclose that at the beginning of law school, I was drinking the Kool-Aid about the Socratic Method. I was triple prepared for every class, notes up the wazoo, highlighted sections, and I reviewed before class. Then one foggy morning, I got called on. I wasn’t prepared. I was hung-over, I was tired, I had to take a leak real bad. And….instead of panicking, or stuttering, I BS’d my way through the case. I got more than half wrong, I looked like an idiot. But after the professor got done calling on me, I saw the truth for what it is. The whole thing was one big joke. They don’t mark you down for being wrong, unprepared, or even dumb. What they say is true, showing up is half the battle (or whatever the stupid slogan is). So the next time you hear some kid talking about he’s up to be called on, or you hear law students talk about it somewhere, laugh at them. Then beat the crap out of them. The average law kid carries at least 40 bucks on them, rob them, and treat yourself to something nice. But as you are punching them in the stomach and stomping on their head, be sure to pepper them with pointless questions about the 1984 AL Batting Title Race, and every time you get an answer, change a fact to make them have to answer you again. That way maybe, just maybe, when they are broke, bloody and with a headache, they will tell the cops about the incident. And the cops will ask if you said anything, and the kid will say “Well officer, he kept asking me if Winfield had decided to choke up and get singles, if he would’ve beaten Mattingly out, then he asked me if Mattingly had hit for more power, would he have won AL MVP.” The officer will say, “Why was he asking you those questions?” To which he will respond, “I don’t know…it was kind of….pointless. Oh well officer, gonna be late for class!”
Before I begin, I plan on doing a ‘what annoys me’ list soon. This week is going to be a busy one for me, as I have to play fake lawyer this week. But since it is Saturday morning and there are no good cartoons on anymore, I finally had a chance to write the next chapter on law school myths, and that is the Socratic Method.
For those of you unfamiliar with the lecture style in law school, the professor basically stands up front, asks about so and so case, but instead of just calling on people with their hands raised, he will call on someone at random to tell about the case, change the facts a bit, and ask new questions. It got the name Socratic Method because I guess when Socrates was not making little boy love, he used to grill them another way, by peppering them with questions about life or something to prove his points. I dunno, that Socrates had some sick ideas about foreplay, and I guess some sick ideas about who his life partners should be. The Greek elders liked Socrates and his teachings style so much, that they made him drink poison to shut him up.
Still, thousands of years later, somebody somewhere decided to adopt Socrates ideas on teaching. Luckily, they didn’t adopt his ideas about little boy love. Either way, this Socratic Method has brought fear in the eyes of many incoming law students. The idea of being called on at random, to answer questions, having to be put on the spot to match wits with a seasoned legal scholar in front of 100 people brings great trepidation to potential law students. They hyperventilate in the bathroom before class. They scurry to read cases and reread them right before class. They have 5 different colored highlighters to color coat their primary point, their secondary points, the weak points, then negative points, and another highlighter to write in big letters “DON’T PANIC.” The idea is that if you survive a series of being called on by the professor, people will talk about you as being smart. Fumble and you will look like an idiot who is probably going to fail out. In my first year, people used to talk about who got called on and how they did. “Oh man, Sean really got flustered up there; I can’t believe he thought the rationale in that case hinged on zone of danger rather than proximate causation. HE’S SO NOT GOING TO BE IN MY STUDY GROUP” (side note - that just reminded me to do a part on study groups). Or on the flip side “Wow, did you see how Mike handled that Personal Jurisdiction hypothetical, he must be reading supplements and researching the cases in the footnotes, I better start studying harder, otherwise I am going to be on the tail end of the bell curve.”
Yes, the Socratic Method has caused many nights of upset stomachs, the jitters and even severe cases of diarrhea. But ladies and germs, it does not have to be this way. Rather than let the great and powerful professor get up there, thinking he is a cross between Johnny Carson and Einstein at an interrogation, law students can control the power. If they just realized, it’s all a myth. The problem with the Socratic Method, the kink in the armor, what makes this competitive game show of being called on one big myth is the concept of anonymous grading. Let me explain, since grades are anonymous, you can get called on, tell the professor “pass” “I didn’t read for class” “call on someone else” “ I played with your wife’s watermelons last night” “I got a really bad case of jock itch” and it won’t affect your grade at all. Sure at some point you have to learn the material, but there is no point in having a steady cram session for 4 months. Tell the professor you would rather be playing solitaire, zone out, veg out, whatever. Insult him, tell him you were falling asleep and not paying attention. Do whatever you want, because law school does not matter till finals start. It’s like this 14 week time filler where professors get to try and beat up students, while the kiddies all stress and kill themselves trying to look smart in class. Then you get to the final, and all the 14 weeks worth of nonsense is replaced by 100 True False questions that had nothing to do with what you learned in class, and a couple of essays you can BS through.
In all fairness, I should disclose that at the beginning of law school, I was drinking the Kool-Aid about the Socratic Method. I was triple prepared for every class, notes up the wazoo, highlighted sections, and I reviewed before class. Then one foggy morning, I got called on. I wasn’t prepared. I was hung-over, I was tired, I had to take a leak real bad. And….instead of panicking, or stuttering, I BS’d my way through the case. I got more than half wrong, I looked like an idiot. But after the professor got done calling on me, I saw the truth for what it is. The whole thing was one big joke. They don’t mark you down for being wrong, unprepared, or even dumb. What they say is true, showing up is half the battle (or whatever the stupid slogan is). So the next time you hear some kid talking about he’s up to be called on, or you hear law students talk about it somewhere, laugh at them. Then beat the crap out of them. The average law kid carries at least 40 bucks on them, rob them, and treat yourself to something nice. But as you are punching them in the stomach and stomping on their head, be sure to pepper them with pointless questions about the 1984 AL Batting Title Race, and every time you get an answer, change a fact to make them have to answer you again. That way maybe, just maybe, when they are broke, bloody and with a headache, they will tell the cops about the incident. And the cops will ask if you said anything, and the kid will say “Well officer, he kept asking me if Winfield had decided to choke up and get singles, if he would’ve beaten Mattingly out, then he asked me if Mattingly had hit for more power, would he have won AL MVP.” The officer will say, “Why was he asking you those questions?” To which he will respond, “I don’t know…it was kind of….pointless. Oh well officer, gonna be late for class!”
posted by EDS | 11:55 PM
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