By Leigh Anne Darlene E. Dispo | The Red Chronicles
Layout by Aubrey Angeli W. Tan | The Red Chronicles
It is a truth universally acknowledged that in law school, the most salient aspect of its students is their ideology. Even those who admit to being only pressured to attempt a law degree due to their parents’ wishes carry out an ideology — albeit it is one that is perhaps unconsciously held and deliberately dismissed as inconsequential. Truly, being ideological is what sets apart those who continue to cling to a mere possibility from those who simply want to live in the world they want. In law school, you do not blunder around after a humiliating cold call or an excruciatingly upsetting exam grade; your failures simply hark you back to why you are here in the first place. In fact, the only time law students start to falter is when there is a lack of understanding from the educators.
Granted, communication will not always be seamless between the student body and the faculty. This is the other truth about academic institutions: You have to get used to the not-so-subtle ways in which professors will impose norms and perpetuate social inequalities. Such gaps arise from the power structures that operate in a learning institution. The educators, who were once victims of the longstanding culture that prevailed in their educational institutions, cannot discern these power structures that their system oppressors have made. From the worldview of these educators, they were never the ‘oppressed’ social agents, thus prompting themselves to adopt the repressive structures by constructively adhering to their former oppressors.
Now, you might have thought that the folks who are not in law school might have showered you with encouragement — saying that if you have lasted this long, then why must you squander all that you have worked so hard for? They probably imagine endless hours of studying books so thick they can be utilized as a murder weapon or several family gatherings put on hold to make leeway for make-up classes. These are not so far off from the truth.
But the reality is much, much worse. You will endure the agonizing humidity just to attend a Sunday make-up class on a national holiday. You will commute through thunderstorms so catastrophic that the whole ordeal must be so tempting for the heavens above to finally come to pick you up — all because you have a class at 18:30 that cannot be conducted online. Just because!
These are the norms in the classroom. Anyone who attempts to bring them up and perhaps challenge them gets easily disparaged. Undeniably, they can be seen as rites of passage — studying the law is no longer just an intellectual exercise; there are also power structures and certain values you have to be accustomed to. In retrospect, it does not seem so harmful. Those who can afford to study higher education often have an excessive tolerance for social inequalities masquerading as formalities, although unspoken. But when such customs seemingly start as trivial nuisances and then manifest into a culture that triggers anxiety and impacts the students’ self-esteem and academic achievement, perhaps it is only natural to at least oppose them.
Many argue that studying law is not for the faint-hearted, yet that is not the complete truth; no one has already mastered the art of keeping it all together before law school. And no one will afterwards. Clearly, lawyers today have a knack for appearing confident in situations that others would fidget in, but keeping up with appearances is no less cowardly than this collective culture of being docile — like a flock of sheep constantly in need of permission.
NOTE TO THE READERS: Volume XVIII, Issue 2, penned and published by The Red Chronicles, is a Back Issue for the Publication Year 2024-2025. Note that this article aligns with the events relevant to the previous Academic Year 2024-2025. For further viewing of the same, you may view the flipbook version or visit our official website at theredchronicles.net.
SOURCES:
- “Breaking through structures of power – Teacher Plus.” n.d. https://teacherplus.org/2024/2024/october-2024-2024/breaking-through-structures-of-power/.
- Cotten, Shelia R., and Bonnie Wilson. “Student-Faculty Interactions: Dynamics and Determinants.” Higher Education 51, no. 4 (2006): 487–519. http://www.jstor.org/stable/29734993.
- Freire, Paulo. 2017. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Penguin Modern Classics. London, England: Penguin Classics.
- Mclaren, Peter L. “On Ideology and Education: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Empowerment.” Social Text, no. 19/20 (1988): 153–85. https://doi.org/10.2307/466183.
- Petrocelli, Matthew; Heil, Erin; and Oberweis, Trish (2009) “Power, Politics and Pedagogy: Teaching about Law as a Structure of Inequality,” The Councilor: A Journal of the Social Studies: Vol. 70: No. 2, Article 4. Available at: https://thekeep.eiu.edu/the_councilor/vol70/iss2/4.