Making our curricula Michelin-worthy: skills taught by chefs

Now, this is not a blog in which I will suggest incorporating some of Ramsay’s ‘motivational techniques’ into our educational system. It is meant however, to turn our attention away from the ingredients for a moment and to the cooking techniques instead. Or rather from teaching substantive law to teaching skills.

Legal skills and skills in legal education

Law schools struggle with skills. We all consider skills to be important (‘a barrister needs to be able to plead, so learn to speak up and how will you ever be able to write down a solid argument when you can’t even spell your own name?!’), but we somehow have trouble integrating skills properly in our curriculum. We aren’t sure what skills are necessary, or where to put it in the curriculum. There is never enough time. Furthermore, who is going to teach skills and more importantly, how do we teach skills? This seems to be a recipe for disaster. Fortunately, no one is yelling at us, and on top of that, we know we have to stir the pot in order to prevent things from burning. Therefore, it is safe to say that the ‘meals we cook’ are palatable; our graduates are competent. But they could be so much better, so much more flavourful, with a bit more attention for skills, theirs and ours.

To set a good example, and to give a proper farewell to Tanja van der Meer, who started her Maastricht career as a legal historian, specialised in Roman law but evolved to become our skills expert in more recent years, a symposium on legal skills and skills in legal education, entitled ‘Past present and future skills’ (Vaardig heden, verleden en toekomst) was organised on 25 October. Key note speaker was Tanja herself, who took us on a journey through her career history and told us what she had learned with regard to learning and teaching. Other speakers were René de Groot on teaching comparative law, Elsje Ronde on rule analysis, William Bull on the different skills in legal education and the importance of them, Sascha Hardt on the skills necessary for teaching skills and David Roef on story telling.

Teaching skills requires teaching skills

Even more attention was focussed on the teaching of legal skills in our curriculum. Skills need to be an integral part of the curriculum, not an afterthought. The way this incorporation is done, is subject for debate however. Experience shows that full integration with the ‘substantive’ courses often leads to a watering-down of the skills part, even though from a didactical perspective this approach is to be preferred. Based on years of observation, Tanja pointed out that the result of this approach is that when students fail, this is more often than not caused by a lack of skills (in studying, in making an exam, in planning, in structuring in expressing themselves in an academically correct way etc.) rather than by a lack of knowledge. Therefore, skills education should be leading in the curriculum design, rather than the substantive courses. 

But even more important: teaching skills requires teaching skills, as Sascha so eloquently put it. Too often teaching skills courses is regarded as an easy job, one that can be assigned to starting tutors. The opposite, however, is true. Good skills education requires not less, but more didactic skills. Experience in teaching is therefore more essential when teaching skills then when teaching substantive courses. Additionally, the development of skills courses in more dynamic and demanding than that of substantive courses.

How very true all the above said is became clear when David took the centre stage and told us a story about story telling. The law is storytelling, he explained, and nothing better than a good story to drive the message home. Energetic and captivating, he not only told us about the importance of didactics, but essentially showed us, in a way only a truly experienced teacher can.

Stir the pot, spice up the meal. Good food needs good ingredients, without a doubt. But a dish only becomes a Michelin-worthy meal when you know how to handle what goes into the pot. Let’s not waste good ingredients anymore, but make sure we all have the skills to make them shine!