Like many other political scientists, I am interested in the relationship between democracy and education. Unlike mainstream political scientists, I interrogate pedagogy to reflect on political science as a disciplinary practice, prospects for democratic citizenship and to expand our sense of political possibility. The history of political science pedagogy is a history of neglect of sustained reflection on teaching and learning.1 It is also a history of confusion between conflicting goals, namely, the education and reproduction of ruling elites, the education of working people for democratic citizenship, building a common culture through education as a form of social glue, assimilating new individuals into the body politic and the democratization of colleges and universities.2 These competing goals signal important shifts in society that impact political science as a discipline. Macro-political and economic issues, competing pedagogical practices, political activism on university campuses and the internal politics of the discipline itself are also in play.
In my review of the literature pertaining to the emergence of political science as a discipline, a common theme stands out. The more intensely political scientists pursued science as a way to achieve disciplinary status, power and societal legitimacy, the further removed from pedagogy and politics they became. Because of this quest for power, political science as science becomes increasingly obsessed with itself (e.g. searching for greater methodological precision) so as to preserve its epistemological authority. This quest displaces both politics and pedagogy. In this sense, political science as a disciplinary practice obscures as much as it clarifies.3 The more intensely it yearns for unmediated access to political reality via methodology, the further removed it becomes from understanding anything at all.
Confusion between conflicting and contradictory pedagogical goals is one problem. The perils involved with the pursuit of a science of politics is another. There are other anomalies pertaining to political science as a discipline. In the words of a prominent commentator, “one of the most salient characteristics of many political scientists is that they are not interested in politics.”4 At both conferences and in dominant journals, the discipline positions itself as a conservative force and defines out of existence scholars who contest how the discipline has come to be defined and practiced.5 Whether this is the result of the “tendency to triviality” and the “methodological evasion of the political,” one of the least controversial gatherings on the planet may turn out to be, oddly enough, a political science conference.6 The British historian Alfred Cobban claimed that political science is a device for avoiding politics without achieving science.7 Nearly sixty years later, publications in the dominant journals and what passes as sound political science confirm Cobban’s perspective.
My goal in this book is to place contention and controversy at the center of political science through critical reflection on the politics of pedagogy. Exactly what I mean by the politics of pedagogy unfolds throughout this book. Ultimately, this book is about thoughtful revolutionary possibilities opened up by radical egalitarianism and how a lot of what is called political science blocks and displaces this democratic project. To be more specific, I argue for a politically engaged form of political science and pedagogy that is critical, radical and utopian. My goal is to re-politicize political science via radical pedagogy. In this regard, this book is grounded on radical egalitarianism, critically interrogating knowledge and truth claims, and practicing a bottom-up perspective that empowers groups that have been historically marginalized in the political realm (e.g. poor people; women; people of color; sexual and gender minorities). To this end, I affirm the unconditional openness of Walt Whitman:
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, a sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp’d slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.8
For Whitman, all people are invited irrespective of social condition, past errors and previous condition of servitude: “There shall be no difference between them and the rest.” He makes “appointments with all.” It is “for the wicked just the same as the righteous.” As I shall demonstrate, the door to political science has not been open to everyone. This book is my attempt to open political science pedagogy to a more expansive, inclusive and utopian future.
Political scientists are committed to democracy and to educating the public. After all, democracy and education are reciprocally reinforcing practices.9 The quality of the former depends on the quantity of the latter. An education can turn a self-absorbed private person into a democratic citizen capable of recognizing and fighting for the public good. It is common to hear political scientists talk about the educational role of the discipline in abstract and conventional terms. These conversation, however, usually do not include radical perspectives on pedagogy.10 The limitations of a narrow and conventional approach to pedagogy are compounded by the fact that “contemporary academic culture is not merely indifferent to teaching,” as Benjamin Barber claims, “it is actively hostile to it.”11
Allow me to refer to some examples and conceptions of pedagogy in the field that illustrate the aforementioned problems. Stephen T. Leonard’s “The Pedagogical Purposes of Political Science” is an insightful attempt to chart the educational role of political science and democratic citizenship but it also contains a number of blind spots.12 Written from a descriptive-historical perspective, Leonard outlines the pedagogical missions of political science but he does so in an entirely uncritical manner. He focuses on the various aims of pedagogy (e.g. civic education; the training civil servants; and the reproduction of scholars) as opposed to asking the broader philosophical questions pertaining to pedagogy itself. Under what conditions does learning take place? How does one best educate another human being? How do pedagogical practices connect to the broader political and economic context? Whose voices are part of the conversation on pedagogy? Leonard’s piece provides useful information about competing perspectives pertaining to pedagogy but the neglect of these broader philosophical questions gives it a narrow focus.13 This diminishes its significance for critical reflection on the interrelationship between democratic citizenship and pedagogy. A general theory of radical political theory pedagogy is needed today. One that views pedagogy as the premier site for the production of skeptical, innovative activist and intellectual citizens.
Another example that avoids these broader questions and explicitly opposes the radical egalitarianism I applaud in Walt Whitman is Alan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, a book that promulgates an elitist mode of pedagogy and seeks to protect the university as a space for white male privilege. Specifically, the goal of this text is to decry the advances made by women and ethnic minorities on university campuses in terms of changes to the curriculum (e.g. feminism, multiculturalism) and to make the case for a return to the era of excellence and high standards (e.g. the 1950s) where universities cultivated the classically educated gentleman. As Bloom puts it, his text is a “meditation on the state of our souls,” a rejection of relativism which “undermines education,” and a defense of the authoritative teacher of “Great Books” as a way to ask the “permanent questions.” Bloom seeks to snuff out feminism, the “enemy of the vitality of classic texts.” He seeks to return us to the glorious age of the 1950s, a time when a limited range of perspectives (e.g. European; white; male) constituted the university curriculum.14 For him, the 1960s ruined everything. It is surprising that such an anti-democratic statement on pedagogy and citizenship would gain such a foothold in the U.S. and become a best seller.
Another conservative statement on citizenship and pedagogy is The Learning of Liberty: The Educational Ideas of the American Founders.15 In tracing the development of varying educational philosophies that influenced the American founders, the authors claim that the crisis in education today results from relativistic openness, a lack of moral grounding, and a debunking of our own system.16 For them, what we need instead is an appreciation of “Great Books” that awaken an anti-utopian awareness of the “essential limitations on what may be expected from political life or action.”17 Just like Bloom, they also construe education as the cultivation of reverence for the American system, soul-craft, the discovery of a priori foundations and a return to the laws of nature.18 Cloaked with the rhetoric of erudition, a dogmatic authoritarianism lurks in this perspective. Pedagogy emerges as a clerical imperative and the celebration of the political and economic status quo. The student memorizes what they are supposed to know about the “American dream” and the triumph of the West so they become worthy of an “A” grade and salvation.
The liberal model of teaching, learning and citizenship is also an official ideology of the political and economic status quo. It shares some but not all of the goals and pedagogical practices of the fundamentalist approach flagged above (e.g. need for political common ground/American creed as a source of unity and stability; defense of private property; constitutionalism; and rule by elites/experts in a watered down version of representative democracy).19 Originally, classical liberal thought was a form of radical dissent theory grounded on the right to resist illegitimate usurpations of power. It provided the philosophical principles that undermined the caste system of the ancien régime. Over time, liberal theory became a defense of private property and formal legal procedures for the resolution of conflict. For liberals, the state is neutral and promotes equality. Rights serve as protections against excessive state power. Liberal political education is minimalist (e.g. basic knowledge of how a bill becomes a law). Within the framework of this liberal democratic system, public schools teach tolerance and “help us negotiate our differences in the name of forging a public life.”20
As critics have pointed out, liberalism lacks a robust theory of citizenship and suffers from delusions of grandeur and historical amnesia.21 The politics and content of liberal pedagogy is narrow and teaches students the appropriate stance (e.g. a...