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Teaching Business Students : American Government

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 May 2020

Stewart P. Shapiro
Stewart P. Shapiro*
Affiliation:
Bentley College
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Extract

The teaching of an introductory course in American Government can be a difficult and frustrating endeavor under even the best of circumstances. Given the general level of cynicism and/or lack of interest by large numbers of Americans regarding politics and politicians, the task of generating student enthusiasm, or even mild interest, toward the subject matter can indeed be an arduous one. When the teaching of such a course takes place in a business college, and when the student audience is “captive” to a college requirement that all students must take the course, the task can be rendered considerably more formidable.

For the past six years I have been teaching such courses at business colleges — one year at Bryant College in Rhode Island, and the following five years at Bentley College in Massachusetts.

Type
Research Article
Information
News for Teachers of Political Science , Volume 47 , Fall 1985 , pp. 1 - 15
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1985

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References

Notes

1 Cited in Fedo, David A., “Liberal Learning and the Business Students: What are We Doing? What Should We Be Doing?” in Forum, (May/June, 1982) Vol. IV, No. 6, p. 3Google Scholar.

2 To deal with such situations, some business colleges, like Bentley, do allow students who so desire to develop a liberal arts major for themselves, thus diminishing the need for them to transfer to another college. However, the problem remains that if a student has decided, for whatever reason, to turn away from business courses entirely, transfer to another school may be the most rational option.

3 Upper level political science courses can be even more specifically business related. For example, at Bentley the department offers one course on multinationals and another course entitled “Politics and the Economy.“

4 Again, I want to emphasize that this approach does not necessarily imply that students do not try hard. I have found that students often do put a great deal of effort into these courses. However, this does not weaken the analogy since participants in a company Softball game may very well push themselves to their physical limits.

5 Evening students, due mainly I believe, to their greater range in age and experience, tend to have a significantly higher level of awareness regarding the political figures mentioned.

6 Without going into all of the details regarding these discussions, I will point out that the most pervasive impression I have gotten from students is the overwhelming lack of a sense of political efficacy that most of them seem to possess; i.e., “Why bother to know about political leaders or issues when there is nothing we can do about it anyway?“

7 LeGuinn, Ursula, The Dispossessed, (New York: Avon, 1975Google Scholar).

8 Other works of fiction that I have used to bring out these issues have included Golding, William, The Lord of the Flies, (New York: Putnam, 1964Google Scholar) and Dostoevski, Fyodor, The Grand Inquisitor, (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1948Google Scholar).