Law Students

Ms. Prof: Socratic? So Ineffective!

By Ursula Furi-Perry Esq.

Image: 

ufuriperry.jpg

Admittedly, I have some beef with the Socratic method. 

For starters, ?Researchers?cite the use of the Socratic method in the classroom and the faculty's emphasis on linear thinking at the expense of student creativity and personal values,? write Todd David Peterson and Elizabeth Waters Peterson in their article, Stemming the Tide of Law Student Depression: What Law Schools Need to Learn from the Science of Positive Psychology. ?Others have found that law school fosters certain personality traits in its students that can lead to unhappiness, such as defensiveness and pessimism.? See 9 Yale J. Health Pol'y, L. & Ethics 357  

What could be worse in promoting defensiveness and pessimism than pitting student against professor in an often adversarial setting? And what law student or law grad doesn?t have a story about some unpleasant experience with the Socratic method? (I still remember the demoralizing experience in one class ? while I was nearly six months pregnant ? when the professor had me stand for FORTY-FIVE MINUTES, badgering me with the most particular questions about TWO PARAGRAPHS in a case. Not only do I not remember what she asked or what I answered, I don?t even remember what case I was briefing, let alone what the case stood for or what law I was supposed to cull from it. The demoralizing part of the experience, however, stays with me.) 

In fact, some say that the Socratic method adversely affects minorities and women law students in particular. In an article titled The Problem Method: No Simple Solution, author Shirley Lung writes that ?For women, rates of classroom participation are lower than for men because the Socratic method ?makes them feel strange, alienated, and 'delegitimized."' See 45 Willamette L.Rev. 723. Interestingly, Lung notes that women are also excluded from law school informal learning networks and that on average, men receive better grades than women do throughout all three years of law school.

Full post as published by Ms. JD on April 19, 2010 (boomark / email).