generalization versus particularity

I am working on class notes for two sessions on planning and zoning law (one of my favorites, and one that I know a lot about, so the question is always, what must I cut?) and all of a sudden a memory of my grad school frustration (design school) with certain classes came into view.

Our professors would NEVER tell us anything about usual practice or rules of thumb in actual construction, and it made us nuts. How many inches of gravel (or is crushed stone preferred?) under a brick walk, we'd ask. "Well, it depends on the situation," they'd say. I began to think that they really didn't know - that they were so far removed from actual bricks and mortar that they really weren't able to tell us.

Now I am feeling a bit the same way - I am starting my Wed class with a broad philosophical discussion of the concept of property. I want to talk about the strengths and weaknesses of zoning in contemporary thinking about land use, not how to measure a front setback. Yet there might be real value in locating the general into specific practice, through some exercises.

Such exercises feel a bit too easy for me - but if there sadly is one thing I have learned about teaching at state college, it's this: what seems like a 6th grade exercise to me is usually a challenge for at least 1/3 of my class. (This was borne out by my fall classroom evaluation, by the way, in which the evaluator opined that I went too fast, tried to cover too much, and didn't give students the context (he meant indoctrination into the "correct" way of thinking, actually) to make the proper value judgments about the topics.)