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> | ON A PRACTICAL LEGAL EDUCATION | | | | |
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< | ON A PRACTICAL LEGAL EDUCATION | >
> | Progress is often created by a collaboration of independent minds. With technology evolving as it has, human beings are finally able to easily collaborate on any project with people across the globe. For example, this wiki brings together the knowledge of many independent minds by efficiently allocating resources to all involved and by allowing users access to the collaboration at any time regardless of space. Such collaborative education environments could be the future of our education system and I propose that we experiment with it in the current legal education system. The goals of these collaborative environments will be twofold: to assist in solving world problems and to better prepare law students for both their careers and their personal lives. | | | | |
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< | "The peculiar character of the problem of a rational economic order is determined precisely by the fact that the knowledge of the circumstances of which we must make use never exists in concentrated or integrated form but solely as the dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge which all the separate individuals possess...to put it briefly, it is a problem of the utilization of knowledge which is not given to anyone in its totality." - Friedrich Hayek, The Use of Knowledge in Society. | >
> | The Benefits of Collaboration | | | | |
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< | I believe this statement is true for now but with technology evolving, human beings may finally have the ability to fix Mr. Hayek's problem of determining a rational economic order (e.g. this wiki brings together some of those dispersed bits of knowledge by efficiently allocating resources to all minds and by maximizing time regardless of space). | >
> | Law schools around the country are not fully taking advantage of these technological possibilities and not sufficiently dealing with the effects of technological change. Our education system seems to be stuck in the past but improving the education system with technology is not a difficult task. By merely incorporating new technology into our current education system we could benefit both students and society. We can start experimenting by creating collaborative classrooms, like this wiki, that put their efforts towards semester-long projects. Rather than asking students to compete on 3-hour final exams, we will work together by expressing our thoughts and ideas on the project and gaining feedback from other bright-minded students. Collaboration will ensure that our projects end up producing realistic proposals and will also ensure that our minds are accurately expressing our thoughts on the subject matter. | | | | |
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< | Maybe. But scholarship
has existed for that purpose for a very long time, while what Hayek
is talking about is the difficulty of substituting for the market a
system of plans that would be based on a similar information volume
presented densely to planners, rather than piecemeal, in a volatile
way, which is how the market produces and distributes information.
Those are related but very different
concerns.
This great technological change will surely bring with it great shifts in power. It will be our jobs as the lawyers of our generation to assist others in adapting to this change and adapting to these shifts in power. However, law schools around the country are not yet taking advantage of technological possibilities and not sufficiently dealing with the effects of technological change. Our whole education system is stuck in the past and I propose that together, we should build a better legal education. As the brightest law students in the country, we have the power to succeed with this objective, fixing past mistakes and building on both old and new ideas. It takes only a single glance at our current legal regime to see the disastrous effects caused by our being stuck in the past. When a disaster strikes, one needs to start from scratch while fixing past mistakes. This wiki is convenient for such a collaborative endeavor.
Why does one have to be
so grandiose about the purpose? Claiming so much makes failure more
likely, for little benefit. Would it not be sufficient to say that
we can help one another to learn better and produce examples others
may choose to refine?
We should transform the law school experience because we do not need to learn the law as we learn it today. The laws of today do not pertain to my life or my future. They are the laws of yesterday, stuck in the past and not forward-looking in any way. Instead, we should learn the law so that we can create appropriate laws to govern the present and adapt to the incredibly different future that is coming our way.
Again, why is it
necessary to be so sweeping? The wholesale replacement of a legal
order implies a political revolution that does not appear to be
imminent. Why is it not sufficient to say that history teaches that
legal institutions will almost certainly evolve more slowly than the
general pace of social change, but that they will evolve, and we want
to make ourselves self-conscious and energetic components of the
change?
For the most part, law school courses do not ask us to think. Professors instruct us to read and ask us to spit back the information we read rather than guide our thinking as to how such information shapes and affects law.
Is that really how it is
"for the most part"? I've been teaching for twenty-five years, in
this and other law schools, and I would say it is, for the most part,
true that law school courses either require or reward independent
thinking.
We hope the professor will give us a good grade, but those grades are quite limiting because they force us to compete. Even when we get past our grades, we are graded by a paycheck.
I do not have a problem with competition, but I have a problem with competition that does not generate progress, and this is precisely the type of competition that is the basis of our current legal education. Progress comes from building on each other's thoughts, not from getting a check+ on a paper or a hefty check from a law firm. Those things are restraints on our collaborative abilities. At the level of intelligence we have all shown by now, competing for a grade is worthless to ourselves and to society.
Furthermore, I do not think that I deserve eighty-three credits for my law school experience. I took some courses and passed some exams. I do not see why that deserves credit.
Even if that were all
you had done, "credit" seems to me precisely what it does deserve.
Some knowledge was presented, on your account, and you demonstrated
to the instructor's satisfaction that you had mastered some or all of
what was presented. "Credit" sounds like the appropriate response to
payment plus learning, does it not?
Our education system fails to realize that in life, there are no due dates or ends of classes. We should match reality with the legal education so we are not stuck taking exams on ExamSoft but testing our minds in the real world. In Professor Moglen's course I was asked to think and express my thoughts in a coherent manner. My thoughts were challenged but for once, my thoughts on, and education in, a topic were not going to end with the receipt of a grade. This truly educational course could be used as the basis for our future legal education.
Not the basis, in my
opinion, but another experiment in improvement. You don't need to
enlist me in the scheme of over-estimating the significance of the
near.
A course similar to the one proposed below, could have a positive impact on the world. The Internet has given our minds longevity and has allowed everybody access to our thoughts and ideas. It gives us a collaborative tool that can help solve Mr. Hayek's problem. We can let our thoughts and ideas build upon each other and come closer to efficiency.
Let's combine all of our bits of knowledge and experiment with a single credit online course. At the beginning of the semester, each student will be asked to devote one hour per week to solving a serious problem in our country (a problem chosen by a professor in collaboration with students). By the end of the 13 weeks, the class would have almost 500 hours of collaboration.
Assuming, for a moment,
that it takes nothing more than an occasional hour each week to be an
efficient collaborator in "solving" social problems. It puts me in
mind of Thoreau's enquiring whether one can mind a steam-boiler
betimes. Perhaps we should have a little more respect for the
complexities of the policy process, and a little less certainty that
changes in modes of communication are all it take to improve our
ability to plan for and execute improvements in social outcomes.
Many aspects of social process are difficult to abstract away in
order to put everything inside a browser frame and an hour a
week.
Even a single moment of collaboration would be better than Congress.
This is a conventional
claim, but it isn't right. Congress is more than the politicians on
television.
In the book Outliers, author Malcolm Gladwell (I know he is a jackass and has weird hair) says that it takes roughly ten thousand hours of practice to achieve mastery in a field. Imagine if this was not just 38 students but 100 students. Imagine if it was not just 1 credit but 4 credits. Could you imagine what we could accomplish as energetic and eager law students, especially if other schools joined in on our course?
How are you measuring
the value? As learning, to the students, or as solutions for
society? If the latter, see above. If the former, hadn't we better
ask a little more closely what will be learned and how?
Forget mastery in a field, we could breed progress. We could fix the education system and fix the country, credit by credit. And maybe, one day, we will truly know what a credit is, appreciate its value, and give and get credit only when it is deserved.
A little more modesty, a
little less heat in the advocacy, some more tempered assessment of
what you're asking for and can expect, including perhaps the
recognition that these are experiments rather than conclusions, and
you'd have a fine essay. | | | \ No newline at end of file | |
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> | First, we will be combining our knowledge and input in order to assist in solving some of the world's problems, whether it is a small community problem or a large-scale global issue. If our ideas are implementable we could petition the appropriate elected officials or agencies that would consider implementing the project. Second, we will improve the education of students, by practicing the refinement our own thoughts. Refining one's thoughts is not an easy process but collaboration could help, as peer-to-peer editing and constant feedback will force us to defend our words or tailor them so that we learn to write what we mean to write. Students will learn that this skill is not so easy and will improve their ability to speak their minds and understand themselves. The ability to refine one's thoughts will improve their careers and their personal relationships. These skills must be practiced and a collaborative classroom where grades aren't everything is a great place to practice such refinement.
We do not need to transform the law school experience but we have to recognize that we need to be more active in incorporating the changes in the world into our own lives. Rather than turning our thoughts into grades, we should learn the law collaboratively, contributing our ideas to society and learning about ourselves in the process. I do not have a problem with competition, but I have a problem with competition that does not generate progress, and this is precisely the type of competition that is a mainstay in our current legal education. At the level of intelligence we have all shown by now, competing for a grade is worthless to ourselves and to society. Progress often comes from building on each other's thoughts and not necessarily from getting a check+ on a paper or a hefty check from a law firm. Those things often act as restraints on our collaborative abilities.
An Experiment With Collaboration in the Legal Education
The Internet has given our minds longevity and has allowed everybody access to our thoughts and ideas. It gives us a collaborative tool that can help us achieve an improved education system, suitable with the technology of today and flexible enough to adapt to the technology of tomorrow. We could experiment with a single credit course. At the beginning of the semester, each student will be asked to devote at least one hour per week to a specified project (e.g. a community problem chosen by a professor in collaboration with students) and one hour per week in an actual classroom to discuss the progress made in the past week and ways to improve on the collaborative experience. The students will give each other feedback, leave comments on their peers' work, and receive feedback on their own work while working together to solve a real problem in the world.
By creating these collaborative classrooms we could achieve both goals stated above. We could assist in finding solutions to problems ranging from personal problems to global problems and teach real critical thinking skills in the process. Students will learn that they can affect the world while still being part of the education system. They will also learn how to apply their education in a real-world setting. Lastly, and maybe most importantly, students will learn to enter the lion's den that is the human mind and at the very least, will realize that you cannot catch the lion without entering the lion's den. |
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