Inside baseball (Signifying Nothing: how does saying nothing at all become so loud?)

Monday, 4 October 2004

Inside baseball

Over the last few days (perhaps, in part, prompted by this) I’ve been pondering the value of Introduction to American Government and its variants.

Intro, I suppose, is an outgrowth of the olden-days requirements (still found in some states) that universities and colleges teach some sort of civics course, and thus the materials out there for teaching it fit that template. I’m not at all sure, though, that it’s all that important a course in the grand scheme of things. It certainly shoehorns poorly into the Millsaps curriculum; as a social scientist (first and foremost), I can’t think of any course that fulfills our social and behavioral sciences requirement more poorly than American government does, and shudder to think what impression of the social sciences is given by our choice to make Intro an exemplar of them (I suppose it gets better when we mosey into the more behavioral material, but the first month feels more like teaching a bad history class).

I guess the key question is: how do I fix it? This is the fourth time I’ve taught the class, and I don’t know specifically what to do, beyond adopting Yet Another Textbook (Fiorina, Peterson and Voss, 2nd ed.) and seeing if that one works better. Maybe I should pull in stuff from the magical mystery tour (I assure Mungowitz it’s only coincidence that his syllabus is the first Google hit I found for “classics in american politics”—I was actually looking for this). Damned if I know.

3 comments:

Any views expressed in these comments are solely those of their authors; they do not reflect the views of the authors of Signifying Nothing, unless attributed to one of us.

1. Rick Almeida wrote @ Tue, 5 Oct 2004, 4:57 pm CDT:

I use Kernell & Jacobson’s Logic of American Politics. I love it because it’s reasonable to read and thoroughly grounded in the idea of politics as a way to solve collective action problems. The text isn’t very overtly theoretical, and is really masterful in its use of historical examples. Have CQ Press send you a desk copy.

2. Chris Lawrence wrote @ Tue, 5 Oct 2004, 9:12 pm CDT:

I used the first edition of Kernell and Jacobson previously (at Ole Miss), and it didn’t go over very well with my students. I may take a look at the 2nd edition just to see if it’s improved significantly, though I don’t feel the need to adopt a new text (after switching for the spring) any time soon.

I put in my spring textbook order today for Fiorina, Peterson and Voss, America’s New Democracy, 2nd ed.; it’s the book I wanted to use this semester, but the chair had already ordered a book (one I despise with a passion), along with reusing the same reader (I’ll consider upgrading that next fall) and adding Fiorina’s Culture War? as a supplemental reading.

3. Rick Almeida wrote @ Wed, 6 Oct 2004, 1:03 pm CDT:

I think it resonates with students if you teach from a bit of a public choice perspective, and can show them that collective action problems are widespread in their own lives, let alone in the government. That’s my hook, anyway, and it’s worked well for me so far.

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