As I prepare class material for a poli sci course

[nadinbrzezinski]

I am forced to think of many issues, once again, and a few of them are interesting.

The concept of the International Order, the concept of sovereignty as well as legitimacy.

Of course how to transmit this to newly minted college students will be interesting as well. Also as I write this material I come to realize that yes, all those crazy courses I took (and at times developed) are coming back.

This includes those concepts of International Order and recognition of borders. Yemen is a good example of violations, and use of power...

And yes I need to keep it, to a point, simple. This is a FRESHMAN course.

[OZark Dem]

1. Do you publish a copy of your lectures anywhere?

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. They are in the process of being written

draft zero is not pretty.

:-)

I might, I'm not sure.

[HillbillyBob]

2. That is still being taught?

I know a lot of congress critters probably need at least a refresher course..or maybe we should start with a remedial reading of the Constitution and simple human decency.

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. Believe it or not Poli sci is still being taught in colleges

and at times it includes some Constitution.

Oh and I agree with you, a refresher is in order... silly things like... ok here is HOW you amend the Constitution.

[Winterblues]

3. How would you describe how sovereignty of American Natives works off Reservations

What I am getting at is American Natives in many cases are a sovereign nation and yet when they are allowed to take marine mammels that are not on their reservation but in State or Federal waters while no one else can take the same mammels. How does that work out in a country that values equality?

[nadinbrzezinski]

6. They are citizens of a different country

essentially.

And these rights were written into treaties that were ratified by both the Tribal Council and the US Senate, and that is my poor understanding of this.

[MadHound]

7. Wow, not to be insulting, but that seems like a rather dumbed down course

The concepts of sovereignty and legitimacy, International Order and border, all this seems like basic stuff.

My Intro to Political Theory, we jumped right into Plato, Machiavelli, etc. Granted, it was a small liberal arts school, but still:shrug:

Sovereignty, borders, etc. are things that I teach in my middle school Social Studies classes. It gets hit again in high school, at least around here. By college they should have it.

[nadinbrzezinski]

8. It is actually the first part of the course, as in the first day

second day, we will go into Plato and all that.

Actually first day you need to do things like ask what they know...

Also did they run into International Order and De Jure and De Facto in junior high school? I am impressed if they did. After all those concepts we went into depth in a 500 level course into International Law, and I did go into them in a course on the Laws of Land Warfare.

[MadHound]

9. Not IO, but de jure, de facto, yes we get into those concepts.

You're right, you need to find out what they know.

So what's their reading list?

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Well I was thinking the Norton Political Science Reader

and a textbook.

The Norton Reader will have selections, instead of having them go out and buy 20 books... and for survey courses even at San Diego State, Readers were usually good enough.

I want them to read a selection from Aristotle, Plato (the Cave is my favorite but that is another story), Magna Carta, some St Augustine and a few other Medievalists. Of course Machievelli, Rousseau, Locke and Hume, and moving forwards Mill, Orwell, and of course Marx and Engels... on to the 20th century I hope we can do some Arendt, if I can get them to read Moral man in an Immoral Society it would be a great thing... Heilbronner is so relevant today it's not even funny, as well as discuss the Patriot Act and the age of terrorism. The last I fear will fall on me actually.

Of course I am still in the process of working this in.

I cheated, sort off. I was going to do history, but I was told if I would like to, so started preparing this. So went and got a Sparks Guide... as an outline... a convenient outline...

And it is extremely basic, of course... (bonus points it does have sample exams and I do hope no student is silly enough to use them in a paper... I don't like plagiarism)

I will see about a few scholarly articles on things like this, assuming I can get them printed on a reader. Things have changed a LOT since I went to college. I mean back in the day instructors prepared the readers, took them to Kinkos... and then copyright came into the picture.

[boppers]

10. The "borders" and "nations" of AfPak/India are fairly current/topical...

That whole chunk of Asia has had years of strife in turning into European style "nation states", and the result is a mish-mash of very complex agreements, hands-off autonomous zones, and concurrent government by very different power structures.