I am fed up of racing through life without a direction (The Buried Life). The entire CLP course is not serving a purpose for all that I feel right now. Freedom in life is what I can never live without and this course is exactly in contrary to what fuels my life; the very ‘freedom’ that I have been seeking for. I desire a life that is free from dogma and no monotony; It is like going through a constant strive for impossibility. There are over five hundred students enrolled and each and every one are competing and striving to secure a place in the legal profession.
The entire education system and the course delivered defeat the notion of education. I hold strongly on the traditional sense that education must be concurrent with interest and this cannot be so when we are required to read and memorise for the sole sake of passing the exam. The Qualifying Board throws a whole chunk of procedures and rules to students. Time constraints and pressures just require plain memorising and they expect lawyers with good quality? Human memory doesn’t work in a way that we are familiar with the procedures without even having gone through them before our eyes. Just as an example, when people are exposed to some material and then later given a task which is unrelated to what is being exposed to; if a person were to see a picture of an apple or the word ‘apple’, those who saw the picture would be better able to name the fragmented picture of an apple than would those who saw only the word. This is akin to the court procedures that students are being exposed to; they will be lost when faced with real life situation. We memorise, not learn. Have they not realised that we are scholars and not storage devices? -Buy an external hard disk!
They say we learn the procedures and eventually we will know ‘how’ to manoeuvre around the legal system. I say we are merely declaring that we know the procedures. Indeed it will be of much ease and familiarity when we are actually handling the real situation but I see not the fact that memorising will be a better way than to learn it just because we are interested to know. It is simple. I ‘know that’ I am supposed to file a summons in chambers but that does not necessarily mean that I ‘know how’ to do it; there is no comprehension! The procedures will be stored in our short term memory because we memorise while if we are given the opportunity to learn because we enjoy learning, it will be undoubtedly remembered; what I call long term storage. And I cannot understand why CLP students are so proud of themselves- is it because they feel like a lawyer already or that they feel they are smarter than others; I doubt so, really! Independent researchers are but not information storage robotic law graduates. It is in no way a display of intelligence but merely a declaration of good mental capacity.
We have a limited number of 24 hours a day. About a quarter of more is spent on sleeping. Few are on travelling purposes and also for therapeutic break times. How much is left? And the need to rush intensely to force and compress in facts and manmade rules kill my drive. Most of us do not even know the purposes of the materials we are trying to remember. Where is the pleasure of learning? People are paying to memorise while it used to be a situation where stipends are paid to people who so desires to carry out researches.
This is when I am often being told that I should not take up CLP when I do not enjoy it; that the course has been proven effective with success for as long as they can remember; and that I can leave if I am unable to handle the pressure- indirectly they are trying to imply that I am a useless rebellious student; treason when someone is acting against a ruling dictator. Memorise memorise memorise rush rush rush; what good does it do? I am another freak who would go through sleepless nights staying up reading Britannica and dictionaries page by page, word by word. I mind not the amount and volume but memorising? NO WAY!
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