50 Similarity
Through his study of elementary school classrooms, anthropologist James
Collins discerns two different approaches to reading written texts: a relatively more
fragmented approach focused on the pragmatics of pronunciation, and a more
“orderly” approach stressing the extraction of referential content through a focus
on semantic interpretation. So-called low-ability reading classes are typically more
characterized by the former, where the more empowering pedagogy in high-ranked
reading classes pushes children to move beyond merely pronouncing the text cor-
rectly, to discussing and extracting its content. Notice that in these more advanced
classes, written texts are about their content, about the stories they tell; literacy
consists in “decoding autonomous (fixed, transparent, universally available) text”
that means the same thing to everyone.^21 Collins observes that this orientation
obscures the social power at work in these readings of text, missing the ways that
the reading lessons themselves are part of systems of inequality and social repro-
duction (as James Gee and others have also documented).
From this foundation in studies of written texts and textuality, we move on to
examine the ideologies of text and the schooling practices that characterize legal
education in particular. We begin with a close look at the canonical style long as-
sociated with law school teaching: the so-called Socratic method.
The Canonical Form: Classic Socratic Method
Teaching and Legal Pedagogy
Transcript 4.1 [7/1/1]Prof.: Okay. I thought I’d start telling you how I used to start the course of
contracts. I used to wait about five minutes after an hour just to start. And
then, () the students were wondering if they were in the right place,
everyone’s afraid to ask (). So, I’d come storm to the front of the room,
slam books down on the desk, and shout out, “The course is Contracts and
the name’s Kingsfield!”
Class: [[laughter]]
Prof.: Well, I didn’t do that this year. I don’t feeling like slamming anything this
year, uh, besides that, a couple of years ago I almost lost three people in
the second row to cardiac arrest.
Class: [[laughter]]From the ideology of law school pedagogy there emerges a stereotypic image of
the Socratic method as a highly stylized teaching genre, depicted vividly in the ex-
cerpt from the popular book One L that was quoted at the beginning of this chap-
ter.^22 Although, as Transcript 4.1 attests, this cultural stereotype still casts a shadow
in today’s law school classrooms, the degree to which the popular image mirrors actual
practice is to date largely unstudied.^23 Some aspects of the broader structure of many
of the classes in this study are aptly captured by the stereotype of law school teaching
that is described in legal academics’ as well as popular accounts. Professors frequently
begin class by calling on a student, who may then be expected to participate in dia-
logue with the professor for as long as an entire class period. Typically, the professor
questions the student about aspects of legal cases assigned for class that day, with