Watch out Ally McBeal!

I went to my Constitutional Law class yesterday and it seemed very interesting yet quite challenging at the same time. The class has been warned that it'll be a very difficult course especially for those who are not legally-inclined. There will be mock courts (graded, of course) where one gets to choose to be a staid and grumpy old Supreme Court justice or a dashing hotshot lawyer. Since I'm so vain and egotistical, I'd definitely choose the lawyer role. Johnny Cochrane has nothing on me! Nah, I think it'll be good for me to argue my case in the mock court for a change, instead of my usual rants at the coffeeshop.

The class will be handled in a quasi-law school manner. There'll be a quasi-Socratic method, where one will be asked a question at random but not in the interrogative manner practiced by a lot of law professors, or even Socrates for that matter. Frankly, I don't know what the big deal is about the Socratic method. The professor kept going on and on about her first humiliating experience with the Socratic method of how she was caught unprepared for not reading the assigned cases on the first day of class.

Yes, the Socratic method is humiliating, demeaning and debasing. It's merely a tool used by teachers to impose the kind of lopsided power structure that deify the teacher's status while reducing the role of the student to the sub-human level. The whole notion of one will learn to think on one's feet and to further deepen one's understanding of the subject on hand is a pure myth at best. Socrates was not known for helping his dialectical adversaries better understand themselves or even finding solutions to the problems; he relished the experience of being able to destroy his opponents' arguments without offering any of his own while humiliating them at will. Socrates was not a teacher and would never call himself one; he had such visceral contempt for "sophists" or the learned people who teach for money. He was just an angry old curmudgeon who incessantly railed in public of how bad the Athenian democratic system was and heaped praises on the fascistic Spartan military-state. This was a guy who didn't realize how lucky he was to be living in the free Athenian society where freedom of speech was an integral part of the culture; he would have long been fed to the lions if he ever opened his big fat mouth in Sparta.

Most law professors now are doing away with the Socratic method and are starting to develop a more collegial and professional approach towards their students. For those who are interested in finding out more about the Socratic method, go see this movie called "The Paper Chase", which is about the much ballyhooed harrowing experience of attending the Harvard Law School.