Word: working
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...system is a detrimental force in the lives of many first-year students; that it creates unnecessary tension, anxiety, and fear of failure in the minds of many of our classmates; that it encourages us to compete, to score points on each other, rather than to communicate and work in cooperation with one another. We believe that the system offers to some the incentive to develop the skill of examinationship, while it offers no incentive to others. We believe that individual talents and interests go unrecognized and are often inhibited by the monolithic structure of the first year...
...called Harvard the "most hopeful center, the rightful leader" in producing men who would be the leaders of tomorrow. But he went on to say that, "As a matter of fact, it has been creatively stagnant for almost a generation. Since Langdell and Ames did their epoch-making work in the revolution of the method of teaching, nothing has been done except the perfection of technique...
Final exams ignore the evaluation of the student's ability to research a problem and analyze it under non-exam conditions, his ability to exercise sound judgment in considering problems of social policy, his ability to communicate and reason orally, and his ability to work with other people. All of these are skills central to a lawyer's career. Moreover, this pressure-cooker form of evaluation is very unlike that which occurs after graduation. That evaluation--whether in a law firm, government, or teaching--takes place over time and is based on cumulative efforts...
...them to be overcome. The present system never gives the student any feedback about how well or poorly he is doing until it is too late to respond. Apart from the practice exam, there are no points along the way where the student is challenged by quizzes, written work, or group projects. At no point, even after his grades are handed to him, does he receive any constructive guidance about how well he is absorbing the law and what his relative strengths and weaknessse are. A student whose basic problem is that he does not understand how to study...
...current grading system rewards those who master it in the first year and punishes those who do not. This is the traditional carrot and stick approach. While such a system has merit in forcing many students to do the disciplined work vital to proficient legal analysis, it has serious drawbacks...