My dream job-teaching has been an exhilarating and an intellectually stimulating experience right from the beginning. Jurisprudence is the subject that I have been consistently associated with. Unfortunately, the subject bears the ignominy of being a difficult subject to understand and to score. In case of some students, the mental blockage was so strong that the task of diluting and ultimately erasing that negativity was almost seemed impossible. This challenge forced me to adopt a number of comparatively new techniques of imparting knowledge about the subject. Thus, I am happy to share my experience through this article.

The first task at hand was to demystify and dilute the enigma that surrounds the subject. Complete reliance on the traditional lecture method seemed inappropriate (as it would have added to ‘boredom’), so a blend of the ‘Socratic Method’ with some shades of the lecture method was adopted and it really managed to break the ice. Use of movie clips as illustrations, newspapers and novels as sources of realistic examples – all this really helped a lot. For instance, the screening of national award winning Hindi movie, Ek Ruka Hua Faisla drove home the myriad ethical issues involved in the case of the Speluncean Explorers, the famous legal hypothetical by Lon Fuller with ease.

I feel that students grasp more easily, if they are asked or invited to participate. Though it may sound unconventional, yet my experience has been that law can be better understood without legal jargons. I found that not only everyone listened with rapt attention, but the students were also eager to be the ‘first-one’ to reply and pose queries. However, this method requires preparing the lecture in advance to maintain and retain the flow and wrap up the discussion in time. Nevertheless, handling end-of-the-class queries within the allotted lecture time was a problem. Use of alternate visual aids, such as overhead projectors, slides and transparencies were a boon in saving time, and I sincerely feel that it is a must for classroom teaching in future. Considering this era of the Internet, I find imparting knowledge and sharing of views through blogs, forums and websites immensely useful. Most students are able to articulate and express their problems better in writing. Especially in a subject like law, I find blogging a very powerful and effective medium of study and opinion exchange. The students not only give structured comments, they inadvertently end up honing their writing skills – a must for any good law student.

Again, after analysing the mentality of the students, I have realised that the moment they get the examination paper, their mind starts doing a ‘keyword search’, much like the ‘Ctrl+Find’ function on the computer. So, if it is a jurisprudence paper for instance and the student wants to attempt the answer on ‘Feminist Legal Theory’, the person would do a rough scan of the paper. The moment he hits upon the word ‘feminist’ or anything even vaguely similar, he would start reproducing on papers whatever he has parroted. It is more like an action driven by the force of habit, a default action in computer terminology, which has lessened considerably ever since exchanging views through blogging and other networking forums have been introduced to them.

Researching through the Internet upon experimenting, I have noticed that when students are encouraged to research a topic through the Internet, they are better able to understand the interdisciplinary aspects of law by creating linkages with other fields of study. The process of experimentation is still on, as I have come to learn that unless innovations are introduced in legal teaching as per the felt needs of the students; teaching would not be a learning or gaining experience but a bland routine.