palestra38
Professor
Posts: 32683
Reg: 11-21-04
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05-24-17 09:53 AM - Post#229615
In response to penn nation
My favorite Socratic method story is at Columbia, where the stern Hans Smit taught Federal Civil Procedure 1 (I had Ruth Bader Ginsberg for II---snore). He worked off a seating chart and called on people, probably checking off those who have answered and moving onto others. Before classes started, the seating chart was on the wall in the hallway and students were required to put their name on a particular seat. Well, not every seat was filled in that class and some joker wrote in "P. Ness" in one unfilled box.
You can guess what happened. Smit got around to that box and asked a question, calling out, "What do you think about that, Mr. Ness? Mr. Ness? Is there a P. Ness in the classroom?" Snickers all around...and the Teutonic glare glazed over and he chuckled and said, "OK, you think that's funny?" He then destroyed the class with rapid fire Socratic questions for the next half-hour, with Kingsfield-like putdowns after each student got the answer wrong.
Other than that, law school kinda sucked (except for playing noon games at center court at Levien--those were classic).
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