Saturday - December 02, 2006
Some Rambling Thoughts on Law School and Academia
Okay, I'm studying for final exams and I have a
few general comments about academia.
1. Some academicians seem to have a strange idea
that it's not their responsibility to teach. These professors seem to take a
perverse pride in not teaching the subject matter, instead they think that good
students will learn on their own, and that only poor students require teaching.
They couch this attitude in comments like "we want you to think, not
regurgitate" and other nonsensical platitudes. This fosters laziness on their
part. This is not a law school phenomenon, it is true at all universities, in
all fields I have seen.
1.a. The goal
of higher education is not to educate, it is to foster the reputation of the
university. Universities gain reputation by having their graduates succeed,
make money, and contribute back to the school. Contributions include money, but
also political and academic actions. Whether students learn is incidental. In
contrast, classes I've taken in private industry or even in the Marine Corps
have been as complicated, but the emphasis was on every student learning all the
material rather than on creating a curve of performance. Instructors in those
schools are not interested in grading curves, they are concerned only that the
student knows all the material. In academia, the fact that students know
material is incidental to the purpose, it is the student's responsibility to
somehow get the education despite the institution's lack of structure in
teaching.
2. Law school is about ten
times easier than my undergraduate mechanical engineering studies. I'm not
saying that this means that I'm going to get A's. Performance is not
necessarily a result of ease of the material, but the subject matter is not even
close to being as complex. Law school professors seem to think it is the most
complicated reasoning mankind can know. I don't think any of them ever studied
differential equations or fluid
dynamics.
3. Law school professors
take great pride in claiming that their subject matter is very complex and takes
a lot of deep thought. In reality, "deep thought" is their way of saying that
the law is based mostly on whims masquerading as legal fictions, and the purpose
of law school is not so much to teach the law, but to teach the lore and history
of past whims. This allows lawyers to use the whim of choice in their legal
arguments for their clients, in the hope that the particular judges that hear
the case will use the whims that support their
cause.
4. First year law courses are
mostly a matter of rote memorization of hundreds of rules. If you know the
rules, you can raise the arguments in your essay questions. Just don't tell the
professors that this is the case, it will hurt their feelings!
5. Most of my professors in law
school have been nothing short of brilliant, despite the hackneyed system that
they have inherited from our academic culture.
Go Back to the Start, Do Not Collect $200 Send me your two cents
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