Legal Studies In Secondary Schools: the New South Wales Experience

The extraordinary growth and popularity of legal studies in New South Wales secondary schools clearly demonstrates the interest of school students in the law and confirms that legal education is not the exclusive domain of the universities. Much of the literature on legal education focuses on tertia...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Patty Kamvounias
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Bond University 1994-01-01
Series:Legal Education Review
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.6019
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1849687013814435840
author Patty Kamvounias
author_facet Patty Kamvounias
author_sort Patty Kamvounias
collection DOAJ
description The extraordinary growth and popularity of legal studies in New South Wales secondary schools clearly demonstrates the interest of school students in the law and confirms that legal education is not the exclusive domain of the universities. Much of the literature on legal education focuses on tertiary legal education with very little attention being given to legal education in secondary schools.1 What exactly is being taught in the secondary school legal studies courses? How and by whom should such courses be taught? In this article, I outline the content of the legal studies courses in New South Wales and argue that the current courses and the plans for further developments are overly ambitious for several reasons, including, that the course content has not been kept to reasonable limits and that in some instances may be overly technical. As part of my argument, I discuss the assistance currently offered to legal studies teachers to illustrate the ambitious nature of the courses in New South Wales. Secondary school teachers are not lawyers, yet they are being called upon to teach “law” or more correctly, to teach “about the law”. Being “teachers” they know how to teach but now they are necessarily concentrating on what to teach.
format Article
id doaj-art-8be4ef00a86641178c01da95c5bf59a8
institution DOAJ
issn 1033-2839
1839-3713
language English
publishDate 1994-01-01
publisher Bond University
record_format Article
series Legal Education Review
spelling doaj-art-8be4ef00a86641178c01da95c5bf59a82025-08-20T03:22:29ZengBond UniversityLegal Education Review1033-28391839-37131994-01-015110.53300/001c.6019Legal Studies In Secondary Schools: the New South Wales ExperiencePatty KamvouniasThe extraordinary growth and popularity of legal studies in New South Wales secondary schools clearly demonstrates the interest of school students in the law and confirms that legal education is not the exclusive domain of the universities. Much of the literature on legal education focuses on tertiary legal education with very little attention being given to legal education in secondary schools.1 What exactly is being taught in the secondary school legal studies courses? How and by whom should such courses be taught? In this article, I outline the content of the legal studies courses in New South Wales and argue that the current courses and the plans for further developments are overly ambitious for several reasons, including, that the course content has not been kept to reasonable limits and that in some instances may be overly technical. As part of my argument, I discuss the assistance currently offered to legal studies teachers to illustrate the ambitious nature of the courses in New South Wales. Secondary school teachers are not lawyers, yet they are being called upon to teach “law” or more correctly, to teach “about the law”. Being “teachers” they know how to teach but now they are necessarily concentrating on what to teach.https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.6019
spellingShingle Patty Kamvounias
Legal Studies In Secondary Schools: the New South Wales Experience
Legal Education Review
title Legal Studies In Secondary Schools: the New South Wales Experience
title_full Legal Studies In Secondary Schools: the New South Wales Experience
title_fullStr Legal Studies In Secondary Schools: the New South Wales Experience
title_full_unstemmed Legal Studies In Secondary Schools: the New South Wales Experience
title_short Legal Studies In Secondary Schools: the New South Wales Experience
title_sort legal studies in secondary schools the new south wales experience
url https://doi.org/10.53300/001c.6019
work_keys_str_mv AT pattykamvounias legalstudiesinsecondaryschoolsthenewsouthwalesexperience