Legal Commentary

This is my first posting as a guest of PrawfsBlawg -- indeed, this is my first posting on any blog -- and I am grateful for the invitation to be invited to the conversation.

Teachers have duties to their students, to be sure. What those duties are and whether we live up to them are the subjects of some future postings, perhaps.

But while we teach our students our subjects -- our disciplines -- we also are teaching them how to be students, how best to go about learning. What duties should we expect from our students? What expectations should we have of them?

I cannot improve on the insights of James V. Schall, S.J., a Professor of Government who teaches political philosophy at Georgetown University. It would not be an exaggeration to say that he is a teacher's teacher, one of those life-changing teachers we have all been blessed with as students and who we wish we were more like as teachers.  Father Schall identifies four duties students owe their teachers: