Chillable Hours

No More Socratic Method!

One of our favorite bloggers (who doubles as a law professor) has recently won the 2008 Rutter Award for Excellence in Teaching, which is presented annually to a UCLA School of Law professor who has demonstrated an outstanding commitment to teaching.

Not only do we enjoy Professor Bainbridge’s blog (www.professorbainbridge.com), but we also REALLY like how he completely bashes the Socratic method as a teaching tool in his acceptance speech. The consensus over at Chillable Hours is that the Socratic method does more harm than good and basically just scares the crap out first year law students who are already stressed out beyond belief.

In addition to giving kudos to Professor Bainbridge for the award, we want to thank him for saying what he did when a large number of his co-workers use a VERY Socratic method of teaching.

Please feel free to forward this on to any of your professors who continue to make you put a name placard in front of you each day during their “lectures” and/or who don’t appreciate how limiting a professor who is super-Socratic can be to their students.

Professor Bainbridge’s speech is below…

May 9th, 2008 Posted by admin | Blog, Videos | 7 comments

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7 Comments »

Good post. I had Professor Bainbridge for a few classes at UCLAw and was also a big fan of his teaching style. I also had some professors who were hard-core Socratic, I didn’t like most of those guys as much.

Comment by legaljunior | May 9, 2008
I think students who can’t handle a teacher that uses the Socratic method are weak. I would bet that someone could do a study and find that those who perform better in a class that uses the Socratic method are more successful in the business world. Quit crying.

Comment by deathstart | May 9, 2008
Bravo Professor Bainbridge. Can you please come speak to a few of the professors over here at NYU about using the Socratic method.

Much obliged.

Comment by pbfan | May 9, 2008
UCLA kids are slow. It follows that their professors avoid teaching methods not meant for the feeble minded.

Comment by anthony ciolli | May 10, 2008
Please. UCLA is a great school and anyone who says otherwise is probably sitting at a TTT school.

Comment by uclaw | May 10, 2008
lol. i graduated from Penn., which, unlike UCLA, is a top 14 law school. I’m sorry you attend a second-rate public toilet that routinely grants admission to minorities with LSAT scores in the 140’s.

Comment by anthony ciolli | May 10, 2008
It cracks me up that you call a school that ranked 16th in the most recent U.S. News rankings a “second-rate public toilet.”

I actually got accepted to Penn and visited their campus, however, UCLA just made a lot more sense to me since I wanted to stay on the West coast after law school. Also, have you ever visited UCLA’s campus? I much prefer it to Penn’s campus, lifestyle, etc.

Comment by uclaw | May 11, 2008