200 Difference
image of Kingsfield or expectations based on The Paper Chase or One L looming
over them. Although the expectations may themselves have created tension
for the students in the initial days of class, they generally commented with relief
on how unlike this picture their actual law school experience has turned out
to be. One group of students remarked with humor on the cooperative stance
they feel their professor takes when he senses that he has moved too quickly for
them:
[7–11]Student 1: Sometimes, I don’t know what it is, but like, he’ll come in [... ] he’ll
just go, go, go, go, you know, and then it’s all finally over everybody’s
head; he’ll come in the next day and realize that everything went over
our heads and he’ll go back over it.
Student 2: See, we sit at the back [... ] we sit in the back and we have a theory
that he comes in the next day and everybody’s just staring at him and
sees all this sea of blank faces and realizes that it’s time to slow down
and go back over things. [... ]
[omitted material]
Student 1: () dumb look on their faces () [... ] (like) a cow looking at a train.
[[laughter]] You ever see a cow look at a train, they’re probably trying
to figure out what the hell it is, you know, what is this thing?Here the image of collaboration between professor and student reaches a very sym-
pathetic level, as the students hypothesize that their teacher can read the sea of blank
faces, gazing at him with cow-like expressions, and then adjust his teaching.
Students differentiate between the teaching style of the Socratic method as
represented in popular culture (which they report as a relative rarity in their own
schools now) and the Socratic teaching they more usually encounter in their
classes. On the one hand, some students expressed disapproval of a “hide-the-
ball” style of teaching in which professors convey a sense of superiority based on
knowing more than the students, in which “you are going to feel stupid as dirt
because it’s rigged, because the professor taught it ten to twenty years and they
know the questions and you don’t. [... ] Well, like in The Paper Chase. If you
have a professor like that which is to humiliate you on purpose” (7–11, 12).
However, quite a few felt that there was some value in a modified kind of Socratic
teaching that engaged students in extended but not mean-spirited dialogue:
[5-22]Student 1: I never raise my hand, but if I’m called on, I don’t mind answering. So
for me the Socratic method is kind of good, because I never talk if I
wasn’t called on and I was very intimidated, very uncomfortable about
the whole idea and then you realize, it’s not that bad. But, so person-
ally, I think it’s good because it kind of boosts your self-confidence in
your ability to actually say something.In discussing the professor in this particular classroom, the student notes that
he “brings it down a bit more, by the joking or by his style.” Note that this