• I think this is beautifully edited. You left a couple of tiny errors to fix, but you did the central job of the editor, to keep what's strong and to strengthen what's weak, perfectly. You were exceedingly faithful to the language and intention of the original, but your reorganization and re-expression of the ideas made what was very problematical for the reader of the first draft easy for the reader of the second. Tanya was well-served in every respect by your edit, which also confirms the strength of your first two drafts of your own essay, where idea-generation, rather than presentation, was where the work needed to be put.

"Slaves ourselves, it would be a mere pretension to think of freeing others." -Gandhi

Originally by Tanya Sehgal - 27 Feb 2009

Rishi Valley School

While in India, I had the opportunity to visit one of India’s premier secondary schools, renowned both for its innovation and the professional success of its graduates. The Rishi Valley School is unique in its mission to supplement mastery of technical knowledge with critical self-reflection and to suggest that all knowledge must be understood in terms of its relationship with “people, things and ideas, to the whole of life.” For Jiddu Krishnamurti, the founder of the School, one-sided education that concentrates “very much on examinations, on technological information, on making the child clever, proficient in acquiring knowledge,” ignores the totality of the human experience.

Facts and rules doe not exist independent of our own minds; our interactions with knowledge are self-referential. We cannot come to terms with the people, things, and ideas we encounter without first understanding the personal filter through which we experience and reinterpret them. This means we should at least be aware of the personal influence on any recounted knowledge. In the law school classroom this means that we would be remiss to accept the facts as presented in the casebook. Each ruling is a representation of a judge’s personal interpretation of a jury’s conclusion about a witnesses’ memory of a long passed event.

Law School

The process is tragically human, as we learn when we take the exam and are given points not for coming to the correct conclusion, but instead by convincingly arguing for both sides. Logic and rational thought always cuts both ways. The pedagogy of law school, in addition to training critical thought, gradually makes us comfortable with defending positions our traditional morality may have balked at. If we learn to come to a result independent of the law first, and then use our learned logic (in the form of “the law”) to justify that result, it would make sense to dedicate a significant amount of time towards examining how exactly we come to our conclusions, and how well that process correlates with creating an ideal world. The law school, while not explicitly addressing this issue, through its subtle messaging (note, for example, the screens around the law school announcing the fact that Columbia has, yet again, ranked number one in placing graduates in law firms) makes its answer clear: come to the conclusion that your high-paying employer wants you to come to. And then we are only compromise away from being a n-year associate at X, Y & Z LLC.

Socratic Method

In place of ‘good’ and ‘just,’ we have been taught about rankings and prestige, and endeavor to do whatever it takes to achieve these status symbols. Instead of endeavoring for a more complex and subtle understanding of important legal issues, we take shortcuts and focus on studying for the exam. Instead of working together, our primary goal is always to do better than the person sitting to our left and right. In this state of constant competition, we never focus on actually bettering ourselves because we are so focused on looking better than our peers in very superficial ways such as grades and employers. Many of us came to law school to learn about Justice, or, more broadly, came to law school to learn about how best to structure our society in order to make it Good. The Socratic Method offers an opportunity to engage and interact with the material in a productive manner similar to that of Krishnamurti and the Rishi Vallye School. Socrates used his method of questioning to facilitate to the pupil’s examination of his own beliefs about the Good and the Just. He believed that the cultivation of virtue was the foundation of true knowledge and devoted himself to that cause. Competition, however, makes students fearful of the Socratic method, and that negates its true power to draw out constructive reflective analysis.

A Suggestion

We need to leave fearlessly, and to ensure that we act not because we want to gratify our egos, but because we believe what we are doing is right. Insecurity and egomania are as endemic in the public interest sector as the corporate sector. In both worlds, we impose shackles on ourselves based on what we think we need, and what will satisfy our desire to feel important, and proceed mindlessly. We are taught to fear each other’s success. If we do not address that fear, we will never be sure that our thoughts and actions are aimed at creating a good society instead of simply serving ourselves. A legal education imparts a set of tools that have tremendous power in shaping lives and social norms. To give power without simultaneously instructing on how to wield that power with integrity is dangerous. My proposal, then, is to facilitate experiential learning, reflection, and relationship building by stepping back from the purely discursive and considering law as an aspect of a larger normative picture. A legal education should challenge the intellect, but a responsible legal education must also engage the personal interpretations that frame every legal argument and encourage self-reflective dialogue that focuses on the true motivations behind the law and on exploring appropriate approaches to legal issues as social issues.

Original Paper

"Slaves ourselves, it would be a mere pretension to think of freeing others." -Gandhi -- By TanyaSehgal - 27 Feb 2009

The Socratic Method

I will begin by beating what some may think is a dead horse. An examination of the law school process reveals that there are numerous mechanisms create a culture antithetical to the pursuit of Truth, Justice, or Goodness.

• But where you wound up was also rather proximate to the same dead horse, which seems to be even more of a problem.

For example, the Socratic method is perverted into a process where students’ memories and/or briefing abilities are tested (many questioners like to begin with the benign yet maddening, “What are the facts of this case?”) and the experience of being questioned becomes more performative than reflective with the student often being more concerned with whether he looked foolish as opposed to whether he learned something about himself.

• The first statement assumes that the only reason to ask a question would be to elicit the expression of implicit knowledge. Other motivations for asking a question, including training memory, also exist. The second statement is an objection to the narcissism of the student, not the technique of the teacher.

The real Socrates traveled in a small group (as opposed to in a class of 80 or 90)

• How do you know? Are you talking about "the real Socrates," or a character in the dramas written by Plato?

and used his method of questioning to facilitate to the pupil’s examination of his own beliefs about the Good and the Just. Socrates believed that the cultivation of virtue was the foundation of true knowledge and devoted himself to that cause. The law school, with its strict curve, imitation of Socrates’ method, and attachment to material wealth, has left no room to build character and virtue.

• The third sentence in this graf does not follow from the preceding sentences, and contains many interior fallacies.

Why should we care about Socrates and his ideas?

Surely the perversion of the Socratic method as a pedagogical tool does not bind us to Socratic philosophy. While that is true, it is also true that many of us came to law school to learn about Justice, or, more broadly, came to law school to learn about how best to structure our society in order to make it Good.

• Assuming the truth of the statement in the second sentence, what has that to do with the first?

If the facts of the case are <span style="background-color: #cc6688; color: yellow; padding-left: 3px; padding-right: 3px">derived the a process that is tragically human, and if the human sensibility is such that it comes to a result first and then uses its learned logic (in the form of “the law”) to justify that result, it follows that we need to be learning something more than how to discover the facts and how to apply the law in order to come to a just result.

• "Follows"? In what logical sense? But, assuming the truth of the statement that "follows" from whatever the first two premises mean when they have been edited to be coherent at all, how would you have come to conclusions about what should be taught, given that you don't know what you don't know?

The pedagogy of the law school is premised on the assumption that it is our inchoate intellect that requires us to undergo the rigors of law school before we are fit to be judges or advocates. But, logic and rational thought always cuts both ways, and so it seems that in order to what’s right we must do something more.

• No, the pedagogy of law school is based on three

  assumptions

  (1) that you don't yet know the language or substance of the law; (2) that you don't have any significant experience living within the culture of the law; and (3) that you have not yet developed the skills necessary to practice successfully and without serious errors harmful to the interests of your putative clients.

What Socrates and the Buddhists have in common

Many progressive philosophy of education scholars, emphasize the need for primary and secondary schools to be holistic in their approach to education. While in India, I had the opportunity to visit one of India’s premier secondary schools, renowned both for its innovation and the professional success of its graduates. The Rishi Valley School is unique in its mission to encourage the child to explore his inner being, his relationship to others, as well as his intellectual capacity.

• What is the significance of your visit to this school? Are you claiming that it represents how Indian children are educated? How Indian children ought to be educated? How children in general ought to be educated? Why is India, a country without any native Buddhism, relevant?

Though some might argue that this approach to education may make sense for a primary or secondary school as that schooling takes place during the child’s formative years, I think it is even more important for a law school to adopt a holistic approach to education for two reasons. First, changing social norms have extended the period of adolescence well past puberty. This prolonged adolescence has given rise to the phenomenon of the quarter life crisis where men and women in the early twenties are still grappling with the questions (i.e., “Who am I?” “What do I want out of life?” and “Who do I want to be?”) that used to characterize the adolescent period. The law school, in not explicitly addressing these questions, provides an answer anyway through its subtle messaging (note, for example, the screens around the law school announcing the fact that Columbia has, yet again, ranked number one in placing graduates in law firms). Second, a legal education imparts a set of tools that have tremendous power in shaping lives and social norms. To give power without simultaneously instructing on how to wield that power with integrity is dangerous for obvious reasons.

• But what has any of that to do with supposed "holism" or "reductionism" in education.

What we can learn from the Buddhists’ success.

What the Buddhists understand, is that in order to see the kind of success that really matters, we need to leave fearlessly, and to ensure that we act not because we want to gratify our egos, but because we believe what we are doing is right. Ironically (or, perhaps, not at all ironically) insecurity and egomania are as endemic in the public interest scene as the corporate scene. In both worlds, we impose shackles on ourselves based on what we think we need, and what will satisfy our desire to feel Important, and proceed mindlessly. We are taught the fear in and outside of the classroom, but the Buddhists, I would imagine, are able to strip away the artifices and experience law school in a less frenzied way.

• Is this real Buddhism or imaginary Buddhism?

My proposal, then, is to have to the law school become more Buddhist in its approach to teaching the law. We should move beyond the “Socratic” and enter a place where we facilitate experiential learning, reflection, and relationship building, a place where we give the normative greater weight than the discursive. A legal education should challenge the intellect, but a responsible legal education must penetrate the realm that ultimately controls most of what we do and how we do it. If we do not address the fear that guides so much of how we live our lives, we will never be able to reach that sublime place where we can be sure our thoughts and actions are aimed at creating a good society instead of simply serving ourselves.

• Your proposal is abstract. It's likely that everyone agreeing with you would mean something different, and that everybody disagreeing with you would think you were just talking vague general nonsense. What we need to do is to get the essay away from Socrates and the Buddha, where whatever is being said is being said through lawyers of indirection so multiple and complex that the refraction of your own idea is unforeseeable, and bring things down to a simpler and less remote level where people can understand what you mean. If you are really committed to the proposition that you know how to fix law school after spending only 23 weeks there, which is quite an achievement, it would make sense to devote a little attention to the real work of teaching and learning law, rather than to the elucidation of distantly-related complex religious and philosophical movements extending over centuries.