One of those epiphany moments happened to me when I read a complaint on a course evaluation filled out by a student in the Graduate Tax Program. The gripe was one I have seen on some other evaluations. The student simply claims, "He doesn’t tell us what he wants the answer to be."
The epiphany is the realization of how deeply entrenched in rule memorization our students have become. They think that a tax practitioner, and some J.D. students think that a lawyer, demonstrates proficiency by reciting rules. The occasional token deference to application to facts might show up when one of these students confronts one of my assigned problems or examination question.
Somehow the students are not getting the message that the key to successful tax practice, or legal practice, is adapting a problem solving, or problem prevention, process to a set of facts. Because there are so many possible fact combinations that clients can bring to the practitioner, a process is far more valuable than a set of rules, and in many instances knowing the rules with nothing more is quite inadequate. If mere knowledge of rules were sufficient, computers could be programmed to replace practitioners.
When I try to determine how our students end up with a fixation on rules, my attention turns to high school, and even more significantly, to undergraduate education. Consider an example. In the K-5 grades, students begin learning arithmetic by learning some "rules." They learn that two plus three equals five. In a good school system, they learn why that is so. Students memorize multiplication tables, but with good teachers, they learn that there is a system, or process, underlying those tables, and the memorization slowly transforms into comprehension. When it is time to tackle the computation of 7,598,394 added to 9,430,484, it is time for a process, and not the memorization of a rule that gives the answer. Likewise, when asked to multiply 498 by 984, a memorized multiplication table, standing alone, isn’t worth anything. Students who study and learn the process of adding or multiplying do well. So what happens to turn good students into Graduate Tax Program participants who want the answer provided so that it can be repeated back to the instructor?
What happens, I think, is that some high school teachers and many, many undergraduate faculty reward the regurgitation of information. The "google" effect, the notion that all answers exist "on the internet," compounds the problem. It is easier to test what a student knows rather than whether a student can think. Often, the testing of a student’s ability to think is wrapped in the testing of a student’s expression of his or her feelings about an event, a book, or a work of art.
The more troubling aspect of this student demand for a slate of question answers provided before the question is asked, for lists of rules, and for grading based on the ability to "give back" the rules is that by the time they reach my classes they should have been broken of this bad academic habit. Understandably, some students might reject the message and yet succeed in passing courses until they reach mine. But I don’t think that explains the substantial proportion of students who have not yet grasped the idea that it is through process that one solves and prevents tax problems.
Perhaps an example from Partnership Taxation explains what is so disturbing. As complex as they are, the rules with respect to the sharing of liabilities boil down to two basic precepts. For recourse debt, a partner’s share is the portion that the partner would bear if everyone pursued their legal rights with respect to the debt. For nonrecourse debt, a three-step analysis is applied. I could ask, on an examination, for a repetition of those rules. That, however, is a waste of time. It only tells me that the student can copy information from his or her notes onto an examination paper. Rather, sometimes I present them with the following true-false question, or a variation: "Because limited partners have limited liability, they never share in recourse liabilities." The answer is false. I also ask why, because a guesser has a 50% chance of being correct. Why? Because a limited partner could guarantee a recourse debt. Alternatively, a limited partner may be obligated to contribute additional capital when called upon to do so under the terms of the partnership agreement. What is the most frequent response? True. The reason? Because limited partners are liable only up to the amount of their original contribution. That is nonsense, but I see it so frequently, in almost the same language each time, that I am convinced there is some old outline or other "study guide" floating around with this incorrect assertion. The better students think about the proposition and apply the rules to possible facts. The not-so-good students “look up” the answer, and in this instance, fall flat on their faces. Now, of course, they can read this post and repeat the answer back to me, assuming I ask the question again. But has these students learned to think for themselves? Or for their clients?
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