The point of a degree course is to learn more about a specific subject – in great detail. If it’s a subject, like Law, that you may not necessarily have studied already, then it is quite acceptable if you know nothing about the subject. That’s what you’re at university for, right?
Maybe. I think it depends on the subject. Take Medicine for example. This is an extremely complicated and intense course and there really isn’t that much you could do before starting the course. Apart from study Biology and Chemistry. But even then I imagine there’s still not much you could do to get a “general overview” of the subject, so to speak. Indeed, how do you get a general overview of Medicine? Is it even possible? With Law, on the other hand, I would suggest that it is possible to find out a good amount even before you start the subject. At least find out about how the system works in general.
The lecture I had today was an introduction to the legal system, more focusing on what we’re going to be doing as part of the “Legal Process” module – visiting court, learning about the UK legal system and exactly how it works. I’m sure this module is going to go into great detail on this (as with anything at university) but there’s basic knowledge that you could have obtained even before studying the module. Particularly if you knew you were going to be learning about it e.g. before the lecture or even before coming to uni to do law in the first place. I’m talking specifically about how the UK courts system is structured, the difference between the criminal and civil courts and various other small bits if information. It only takes half an hour or so to read a few pages from a book, do some research, visit wikipedia and build up a foundation that the lecture will build upon.
Obviously, I’m not saying here that it is a requirement to have detailed knowledge about these kinds of things – that’s what the course is there for – but even so, the number of people in the lecture who didn’t have a good idea of what happens in the courts was surprising. Or maybe they just weren’t confident enough to say when asked. At least I hope that’s that case.
