Can we get a "leftwing bullshit" tag?

[zadok-allen.livejournal.com]

Comments

[donkeyjon.livejournal.com]

For example: compare and contrast the French and American revolutions, and their subsequent infancy as democratic nations. The differences are overwhelmingly due to the different people involved in that process, and their concerns going in to the revolution. You can't study the American government (and yes, it is essential for students to study the American government) without learning why the founding fathers were so loathe to create a true democratic state, which you can't understand until you actually study Jefferson, et al. You can then look at the French example, which provides a sharp example of what a direct appeal to democracy means, including a great example of tyranny of the majority.

Essentially, you can't even make the arguments you are trying to make without knowing this information. You can't say "the founding fathers' impact on our systems is overblown" without studying who the founding fathers were and how our narrative about them has differed form the reality of their lives. In essence, you can't even make the argument you are trying to make in any coherent way without studying these things.

Novices to a subject are obviously not going to fully grasp how to learn it, but that doesn't mean they have no role, or only a receptive one, when it comes to their curriculum.

They absolutely need a say. But they don't KNOW what they need to learn about many subjects. You are a lawyer. How many first-year law students have any idea what they should be learning in, say, a class on contract law? What precedents should they be studying? What case briefs are important for them to know in order to properly prepare contracts? They have no clue. If that were not true, there would literally be no need for higher education of any kind. There is certainly a role for those who know more about a subject to choose the information that is important for students to know.

The funny thing is that I think you and I are absolutely on the same page here. I have been fighting constantly for more student input in business schools, because their voices are marginalized right now, and they shouldn't be. And communication with the students is required in order to best help them understand the material and present counter-examples and edge cases to the "established story". But, put simply, the students don't have the background to understand what should be a part of their curriculum.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

You can't say "the founding fathers' impact on our systems is overblown" without studying who the founding fathers were and how our narrative about them has differed form the reality of their lives. In essence, you can't even make the argument you are trying to make in any coherent way without studying these things.

I'm not trying to make that argument. My point is that your approach to the question takes a whole lot of things for granted, including how we evaluate political history and how we make sense of that political history to ourselves. Even here you continue to make some fairly traditional assumptions about relevant comparisons and contrasts, choosing to characterize the relevant difference between the American and French Revolutions as being about ideas and political philosophy (which serves how we traditionally understand our history and our "exceptionalism") rather than about the background conditions for those revolutions (colonial America was quite different from pre-revolutionary France).

I am not interested in debating Thomas Jefferson's status within the traditional way of thinking; that's not the point I'm trying to make. What I'm trying to do is to draw your attention to the nature of the rhetoric and argument that you're using - in particular, its highly contingent character. You are speaking, throughout, as an educated American who expects to be understood by other educated Americans who believe the same kinds of things about our country. When I asked you, "Why Thomas Jefferson?" you explained, "Because he's important in our history." When I asked you, "Why does that matter?" you explained, "Because it explains the differences between these two revolutions." Those are persuasive answers for someone who believes, as you do, certain things about the US and the significance of its philosophical roots. But it doesn't explain, to someone outside of that tradition or capable of thinking outside of it, anything. They're just conclusory assertions piled atop one another.

[donkeyjon.livejournal.com]

At some point, there's no bottom to the mud. You're championing a point of view that is simply impossible, namely providing context about something with no underlying assumptions. It doesn't happen. I'm perfectly comfortable using underlying assumptions that fall back on centuries of historical and political thought and study. I understand that I must be willing to defend those positions (and am perfectly able to do so), but you're presenting an alternative that is "All of this stuff is wrong" that has no basis in actual social science or historical research.

So, my questions for you would be "Why not Thomas Jefferson?" What reasoning can you come up with which would justify not teaching about him in a class on American History?

[oslo.livejournal.com]

This isn't about Thomas Jefferson. This is about the way that professors and students relate, and the way that the curriculum regulates that relationship.

I suppose the way that I'd respond to your question would be to ask: Well, what's "American History?" Why have a class on American History? What's the point of such a class? Can you put it any way other than, "Well, it's important for Americans to be familiar with their history," which wouldn't be responsive?

I mean, think about everything that's packed into characterizing some body of historical materials and texts as "American History." What are you including and excluding? If you look into that question, surely you'll find plenty of contentious questions : when does it begin? What peoples, political structures, geographical limits are relevant? Even figuring out what events and persons ought to figure in that history is a fraught question. Before long you start to ask a deeper question: Why is this important to us? Why is it important to Americans?

Here's what I wouldn't find controversial: If American History is understood as a forum used to indoctrinate a generation of students on the shared, collective self-flattering mythology in which we, as Americans, are deeply invested, then of course you teach about Thomas Jefferson. You tell the students that he was a flawed man, but that he was a great intellectual, one of the Founding Fathers, blah blah the fucking blah.

[donkeyjon.livejournal.com]

Can you put it any way other than, "Well, it's important for Americans to be familiar with their history," which wouldn't be responsive?

That is not only responsive, it's a good enough reason on its own. You and I will have to disagree here, because you seem to believe it's ok to throw away essential acts of historical and political thought because you disagree with the people who had a part in bringing them about. That's precisely the sort of "leftwing bullshit" that would need its own tag. :)

I think you're too quick to throw the baby out with the bathwater, here. Jefferson and the other men who drafted the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution were absolutely brilliant. They accomplished something that was unthinkable at the time, and managed to build a system that was both malleable and difficult to subvert. Examples of other groups who tried to do the same and failed miserably are pretty clear on this.

Now, they were also a group of elitist, slave-owning aristocrats who were guilty of crimes including murder and rape which they were never made responsible for. That, too, is an important lesson that should be taught.

In the end, though, you can't study history or political science without covering them.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

You are a lawyer. How many first-year law students have any idea what they should be learning in, say, a class on contract law?

This is perhaps not a fair example, because I can already say that many 1Ls can and will have a good idea of what they should be learning in contract law. They will, at the same time, be in a position where they can meaningfully engage the professor on the curriculum.

First, most of them will understand that they need to understand contract law for their respective bar exams, so many of them will want and expect to be taught accordingly.

Second, law students have access to a wide array of study materials that they routinely use to supplement their class assignments. These materials will lead them to expect certain subjects to be touched on and may raise issues for them that they'll want to address in class.

Third, law students (in the US) are all college graduates, and so will generally be more mature students with developed expectations on what their classroom experiences should be like.

More specifically, a law student entering a contract class may have a background in economics that will equip them to evaluate contract law from an economic perspective; a law student with a background in gender or race theory might be interested in understanding contract law from a critical theoretical perspective; a law student who has worked between undergrad and law school might have their own practical experiences they would like to understand better through the lens of abstract legal study. And so on.

Fourth, core classes like contract law tend, as a matter of tradition, to have a lot of unnecessary precedents on the curriculum. Professors tend to require students to read old, canonical works that have little relevance to modern law or practice, just because that's what they were taught. This both helps to illustrate the highly contingent nature of curricula as well as where even novice law students might have a legitimate basis for challenging what they're taught. Walking in on day one, a 1L might not be able to say, "Well, I know that I don't need to know this stupid ancient case." But they absolutely can say, "I don't understand why we're reading this case; how is it relevant?" And the professor needs to be able to respond.

So, to sum up, I feel like I can say quite confidently that 1Ls in contract law will have a very good sense of what they should be learning there, and I would extrapolate from their case to a lot of the kinds of classes students are likely to take while at university.

[donkeyjon.livejournal.com]

I would love to see the results of giving the students in a contract law class the task, on day 1, of producing a "reading list" of the significant cases that they should be covering for the semester. In fact, it's an idea I might incorporate into some of my classes. I love the idea of having them come up with information that they need to learn about for the course, then have a discussion on the areas in which their list is lacking and the areas where they covered something I didn't think to add to the syllabus.

Granted, I deal with undergrads, so the lists would not be as complete, but I'd guess that you would find their list to be lacking in many significant areas. I'll have to try something like this in the future.

[oslo.livejournal.com]

I would love to see the results of giving the students in a contract law class the task, on day 1, of producing a "reading list" of the significant cases that they should be covering for the semester.

So framed, I don't think this is a task that would be productive for most 1Ls. They will come to contract law with a set of defined goals and a growing grasp of the substantive law being studied, but they won't know the cases they'll need to study. Indeed, when it comes to an area like contract law, there aren't really such things as "cases they'll need to study"; rather, there will be cases that more or less demonstrate the application of some specific legal principle. Really, the case-based approach to teaching law is just another one of the ways law school is tied to its traditions. Learning the law from reading cases is less about introducing students to a canon of cases than it is about teaching legal reasoning.

[donkeyjon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, one of my main complaints about business school is that the schools rely too much on case studies to teach, but don't actually provide an opportunity to think critically and move beyond the rote cases. Case studies are useful, but Harvard and Stanford have gotten everyone believing that making people read one and write a set of recommendations is the same thing as teaching critical thinking.