![handle is hein.journals/secnd18 and id is 1 raw text is:
byM.H. Sam Jawbson, Willamette
Univrsity College of Law
We haze seen [our students] and they
are [not] us.
Pogo
Some time (a lot, actually) has passed
since I started teaching law school,
even more (a lot more) since I was in
law school, and of this I am certain:
today's law students are no different
from before (i.e., in the olden days),
and today's law students are com-
pletely different from before. The
students today are no different from
the students of yesterday in what it
took to get admitted, what it takes for
them to stay and what makes the line
of least resistance so attractive. How-
ever, the students today are different
from the students of yesterday in many
of the same ways.
Getting admitted to law
school. To have the credentials to be
admitted into law school, the students
of today like those of the past, had to
be well-rewarded for their prior work,
but perhaps today's students were too
well-rewarded for the quality and
difficulty of the work done. Many of
us have been awed by the number of
students we teach who have never
done any writing, who have never
learned the grammar and style rules that
produce competent writing, who have
never experienced the thrill of explor-
ing an idea or project independently
and deeply and who have never had a
sufficiently close relationship with a
professor or teacher to have anyone
notice that they had difficulty reading,
memorizing, or paying attention, but
yet claim grades that were all As.
(Most college registrars must have
difficulty calculating student GPAs
because all of my students claim that
they received all As, even though the
median undergraduate G PA for our
law students is approximately 3.25.)
Grades. While we sense that our
students may have had a less rigorous
education than in the olden days, some
recent studies support that conclusion:
* In 1966, 15% of first-year
college students had A averages in
CONTINUED ON PAGE 4
by Mary Duinewld, Hamline University
School of Law
I have many students whom I think of
as typical law students: a few years out
of college, still used to living within the
limited resources student life provides,
but basically young and healthy and
able to devote all the time to the legal
education that law school demands. As
a teacher, however, I find it a challenge
to work with students in radically
different or difficult life circumstances,
often circumstances that would have
discouraged me from attending or
continuing law school. I admire the
courage and tenacity of these students,
but I sometimes wonder why they are
in law school and how they can
possibly devote the attention required
to master the material while they are
here.
For instance, in one year, I had a
student with two children whose wife
had cancer, a student whose fourth
child was due during December exams
(she also commuted two hours a day
and had an alcoholic mother-in-law
living in her basement), a student who
was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis
two months after starting law school,
and a student with a very responsible
full-time job that often required travel
to Europe or Asia. I'm not even
bothering to enumerate the students
who are single parents and have
arranged for their children to live with
relatives during the week, then spend
CONTINUED ON PAGE 5](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/secnd18&div=1&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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