Breaker Breaker 1-9 for a Radio Check!
A surreal moment in Torts yesterday: entering upon Washington v. Louisiana Power and Light Co., Prof. Calhoun selected her victim, and the first thing out of the young thing's mouth was that she didn't know what a citizens band radio antenna thing was.
Oh my. Technology has come so far since I was a kid. Back when I was a child, before there were cell phones and Blackberries, there were CB Radios. You know, like "Convoy" and "Smokey and the Bandit." When my parents left me at home in charge of my six siblings, they kept in touch by radio - we had a big ol' base station, and they had mobile sets in the cars.
And before microminiature technology, with chip generated waves, the radio depended on actual crystals to vibrate... in order to talk on another channel, you had to have another crystal in your set. Those in the know, and not wanting to have the general public in on every conversation, opened up their radios, unplugged the crystal, and turned it around in the socket - thus changing the frequency - and opening up the world of the "Backside". There was a whole cluster of folks we knew from over the air on the backside; in the great blizzard of '78, we kept in touch with each other over the air, and my step-dad used his snowmobile to make sure others had food. Anyway, it was mind boggling to me that someone wouldn't know what a CB antenna was. But then again, I can't think of the last time I saw a TV aerial on a house, let alone a great big-ol' monster CB antenna in a back yard. Ubiquitous instead are those little tiny dishes, arrayed in house-by-house echelons all pointing obeisance to their unseen master in the sky. (I do have a CB in my van, though. And a cell phone in my pocket. And a dish on my house. Talk about a foot in both worlds.)
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But the experience pointed out the one thing I have found remarkable about law school instruction - none of the professors use diagrams or visuals to help students 'see' what is going on in the text. Here are all these great big chalk boards, but only words (and the occasional arrow) go on those boards. Pages and pages of books, and at best we get a picture of the body of Jeremy Bentham in his display box - but never a picture that conveys at a glance key ideas under discussion. (Not even a genealogical diagram - but Audley v. Jee made a whole lot more sense once I drew one in my case book.)
I find the absence of graphical information to be astounding. Even were one to argue that law is primarily a verbal pursuit, it is also true that a primary role of the lawyer is to convey information to others - to non-lawyers - in ways that effect desired outcomes. A large percentage of our clients and of our juries (and perhaps, even of judges) are more visual learners than textual learners. I believe it is a serious error to insist on text-only teaching methods.
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Captain Vegetable was a great hit... followed around all day by the yearbook photographers - nobody had come to school with a colander on his head before.
Today is Pirate Day. He drew magic-marker stripes on a white tee shirt, borrowed a vest of mine (turned inside out, so the flowers didn't show), made a newspaper hat with skull-and-crossbones on it, borrowed my dough hook from my Kitchen-aid, and had me draw a mascara mustache and goatee. "Why would a pirate go to school?" SonThree asked? "To learn the three Arrrrrrs!"
Oh my. Technology has come so far since I was a kid. Back when I was a child, before there were cell phones and Blackberries, there were CB Radios. You know, like "Convoy" and "Smokey and the Bandit." When my parents left me at home in charge of my six siblings, they kept in touch by radio - we had a big ol' base station, and they had mobile sets in the cars.
And before microminiature technology, with chip generated waves, the radio depended on actual crystals to vibrate... in order to talk on another channel, you had to have another crystal in your set. Those in the know, and not wanting to have the general public in on every conversation, opened up their radios, unplugged the crystal, and turned it around in the socket - thus changing the frequency - and opening up the world of the "Backside". There was a whole cluster of folks we knew from over the air on the backside; in the great blizzard of '78, we kept in touch with each other over the air, and my step-dad used his snowmobile to make sure others had food. Anyway, it was mind boggling to me that someone wouldn't know what a CB antenna was. But then again, I can't think of the last time I saw a TV aerial on a house, let alone a great big-ol' monster CB antenna in a back yard. Ubiquitous instead are those little tiny dishes, arrayed in house-by-house echelons all pointing obeisance to their unseen master in the sky. (I do have a CB in my van, though. And a cell phone in my pocket. And a dish on my house. Talk about a foot in both worlds.)
***
But the experience pointed out the one thing I have found remarkable about law school instruction - none of the professors use diagrams or visuals to help students 'see' what is going on in the text. Here are all these great big chalk boards, but only words (and the occasional arrow) go on those boards. Pages and pages of books, and at best we get a picture of the body of Jeremy Bentham in his display box - but never a picture that conveys at a glance key ideas under discussion. (Not even a genealogical diagram - but Audley v. Jee made a whole lot more sense once I drew one in my case book.)
I find the absence of graphical information to be astounding. Even were one to argue that law is primarily a verbal pursuit, it is also true that a primary role of the lawyer is to convey information to others - to non-lawyers - in ways that effect desired outcomes. A large percentage of our clients and of our juries (and perhaps, even of judges) are more visual learners than textual learners. I believe it is a serious error to insist on text-only teaching methods.
***
Captain Vegetable was a great hit... followed around all day by the yearbook photographers - nobody had come to school with a colander on his head before.
Today is Pirate Day. He drew magic-marker stripes on a white tee shirt, borrowed a vest of mine (turned inside out, so the flowers didn't show), made a newspaper hat with skull-and-crossbones on it, borrowed my dough hook from my Kitchen-aid, and had me draw a mascara mustache and goatee. "Why would a pirate go to school?" SonThree asked? "To learn the three Arrrrrrs!"
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