Taking the Long View

• Date: 01 February 2010
• Author: Robert B. Bennett, Jr.
• Published date: 01 February 2010
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-1722.2010.01072.x

Taking the Long View

Robert B. Bennett, Jr.

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As legal studies faculty, we need to take the long view in our academic and

professional lives. Of course, John Maynard Keynes supposedly noted that

in the long run we are all dead. We do not need to take quite that long a

view. Taking the long view would seem to be a cliche

´d piece of advice, but

too frequently we, like our students, get focused on meeting the next

short-term hurdleFgetting through the next class, grading the next stack

of papers, making it through the next advising appointment, making the

next conference paper deadline, or (God forbid) making it through the

next committee meeting. Although all of these hurdles are an inseparable

part of the academic endeavor we have chosen for ourselves, they often

distract us from taking the long viewFthinking about what is really im-

portant in our academic and professional lives.

If we take the long view, it should inform our approach to teaching

and pedagogy. Our pedagogy should be directed at facilitating long-term

student learning, including long-term personal development and reten-

tion of critical content knowledge in the areas of law and ethics. Moreover,

we ought to be developing in our students an appreciation of the impor-

tance of lifelong learning.

We should pay attention to the research on learning and student

characteristics, which ought to affect our classroom activities and assign-

ments. Moreover, we should discuss with students how people learn. I take

the time to review good general study habits at the beginning of every

course.

Experience and social science research support the proposition that

there is no real substitute for time on task but that we assimilate and re-

member more information that we gather from experience, including the

experience of writing. Most people also remember more that they see or

r2010 The Author

Journal compilation r2010 Academy of Legal Studies in Business

163

Journal of Legal Studies Education

Volume 27, Issue 1, 163–170, Winter/Spring 2010

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Professor of Business Law, Butler University College of Business.