PT 52, RC 8, Teachers Forum

[freddie]

I must be missing something, because I do not see why b) is correct. While passage B clearly shows that the author is a member of the profession criticized therein ("we who teach the law"), passage A is not clear on this point. While passage A reveals that the author is a teacher ("the perniciousness of the historiographic approach became fully evident to me when I started teaching") couldn't the author of passage A teach something other than history? A teacher of another subject could very well be aware of the techniques used by teachers of other subjects...

This one is driving me nuts, so thanks in advance for the clarification!

[theavrock]

I don't have the passage in front of me, but I believe it says something along the lines of the author attending a conference or gathering for teachers of history.

I remember pulling my hair out over this one until I saw that in the passage and ended up choosing the credited answer.

[zworykin]

I can understand why one would disagree with the credited response. The passages indicate that both authors are teachers. The professions discussed, one could easily say, are "historian" and "lawyer," not "teacher."

However, it hinges on the decision that the professions being discussed are actually "history teacher" and "law teacher" because, while the passages do discuss historians and lawyers, the point of the passages is to discuss the value of storytelling in teaching.

It's a weak question, at best. I would have had to flip a coin had I taken this particular administration of the test.

[hax123]

This question is crap.

I determined that the profession discussed in the first passage was teaching and the profession discussed in the second passage was law. The author of the first passage is clearly a teacher. The author of the second is also clearly a teacher. However, why is a teacher of law considered a member of the legal profession? The LSAC should not have expected test takers to know this.

[JD2014]

Regarding passage A, it implies that the author is a historian, and states "Historians require undergraduates to read scholarly monographs that sap the vitality of history; they visit on students what was visited on them in graduate school."

It essentially states that history teachers are historians, and thus a history teacher writing about historical writing would be a member of the profession described in the passage.

In passage B, the writer is a law professor ("we who teach the law"), and the passage is about legal education ("the currently fashionable call for attention to narrative in legal education"; "law students learn to act"; "will find its way in to the law curriculum") and only mentions lawyers as the product of the education system the author criticizes.