OPINION
8 Obiter Dicta
The Curve, Class Structure and ‘Bleached Out’
Intellectualism
michael motala › staff writer
I
n the wild struggle for existence,” writes
Oscar Wilde, “we want to have something that
endures, and so we fill our minds with rubbish
and facts, in the silly hope of keeping our place.”
The Picture of Dorian Gray was not intended as a
“ commentary on the pursuit of legal education; yet it
furnishes, albeit obliquely, a portrait of what ails law
students and the culture of legal practice.
Law school promotes a culture of individualism
that pervades the practice of law. It entrenches
and exacerbates classism and status. Classrooms
are steeped in unnecessary competition, perfectly
illustrated by the vision of academic excellence—given
life through 100% final exams subjected to the bell
curve—bleaches outs intellectual and socioeconomic
diversity.
Examining on a curve attracts a number of
justifications. It’s always been done this way. It’s how
to inculcate “thinking like a lawyer.” It promotes
healthy competition among students, incentivizing
performance and hard work. It conforms with the
natural spectrum of ability and performance anyway.
It’s the most efficient system we have. Facially, such
arguments seem rational. Examined rigorously,
however, one sees they are unjustified by facts.
There is a rich body of research on the use of bell
curves. Dr. Martin Covington, a cognitive psychologist
from UC Berkeley, has studied the competitive
classroom dynamic for decades. Despite the prevailing
rationale, the empirical result is a mixed picture. Some
students are spurred to greater action because of the
curve. Others are demoralized and lose self-esteem
and confidence. The upshot is that the academic
performance is highly complex as it relates to the mode
of evaluation, verging on counterintuitive at times.
Dignity and self-worth, however, are undoubtedly
central components of academic success.
Humans are naturally inclined to learn through
adapting to their environment. The mechanism of
action in a competitive classroom is relational and
game-like. Students pursue “ability status” relative to
others. Often there is a minority of students who are
competitive by nature, and their peers are absorbed
into the culture driven by pride and shame. Some students thrive in this context, reinforcing their selfworth. Their achievement and ability status is divisive
and toxic to social relations. Others subscribe to an
ê Photo credit: trappedandconfused / DeviantArt
“entity theory” of success, and believe that their failure to achieve is immutable. Learning therefore loses
intrinsic value, and these students under-perform.
The curve exacts immense psychological stress,
erodes dignity, and diminishes self-worth for the
majority. Those adept at exam-based adjudication are
also prone to a false sense of merit. So there is a culture
of competition, arrogance, shame and suspicion pervading the law.
The economic consequences of under-performance can also be severe. For organized recruitment,
first year grades are all that matter. In the context of
Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray’s suggestion
that intelligence is linked to factors like income and
socioeconomic status, the distributive implications of
the grading curve are troubling.
Think of classmates who have to take care of children, work a part-time job to supplement their
income, or come from a low-income family. It is intuitive that socioeconomic status plays a causal role in
academic performance, taken together with other
factors of course. The premise is that performance and
wealth are correlative, and this relationship is reinforced by the current mode of evaluation. And so the
curve mirrors and reproduces the capitalist system,
rewarding those who already have privilege at their
disposal and entrenching the cognitive-cum-capitalist elite.
This makes sense, since corporate lawyers are the
handmaidens of the capitalist system. Not all students go that route, after all. The problem is therefore
that the entire pedagogy at law school is molded to
serve corporate interests. It imposes upon legal education the need for rank and recognition, whereas
many practice areas are collaborative and driven by
mutual gain through conflict resolution. Students
who do not “fit” with this culture or thrive under
this model not only under-perform, but are faced
with the challenge of entering a saturated legal labour
market. Exacerbating their plight is the stain of poor
performance.
The curve is