Abstract
[Writing] will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention [of written language] will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing.[1]
Socrates routinely expressed complete contempt for written language. In fact, putting this article in writing feels like a betrayal of Socrates and his scholarly expectation that wisdom was best demonstrated through oral discourse. Although law school professors employ the Socratic teaching method, they reject the reasoning behind his methods. Students may receive participation credit for classroom discussions, but law school grades are primarily assigned based on written answers to assessment questions. Historically “the traditional – and sole – law school method for student learning assessment in a doctrinal course was a single, written comprehensive final examination.”[2] Even as more frequent assessments become common, faculty in doctrinal classes continue to award grades based primarily on written examinations.
Socrates would have disdained such an approach to discerning wisdom. Displaying knowledge during oral discourse would be far more relevant to his determination of student achievement.
[1] Socrates did not write down the contempt he expressed for written language, a contempt that he would likely also apply to law school written examinations. Instead, his student, Plato (428-347 BCE), memorialized Socrates’ disdain. Mary Kalantzis & Bill Cope, Socrates on the Forgetfulness that Comes with Writing, newlearningonline: Literacies on a Human Scale, https://newlearningonline.com/literacies/chapter-1/socrates-on-the-forgetfulness-that-comes-with-writing (quoting Plato: Phaedrus, in Plato: Complete Works 551-552 (John M. Cooper & D.S. Hutchison eds., G. M. A. Grube trans., Hackett Pub. 1997) [https://perma.cc/N797-3ENE].
[2] Joan MacLeod Heminway, Teaching Business Associations with Group Oral Midterms: Benefits and Drawbacks, 59 St. Louis U. L.J. 863, 864 (2015).
Recommended Citation
Joanmarie Davoli,
We Need to Talk,
33
Cath. U. J. L. & Tech
117
(2025).
Available at:
https://scholarship.law.edu/jlt/vol33/iss2/5
