Table Of ContentIVlUDERI I .
NfETflUDS
OF
T.E.ACr11NG
POL1I'1CJ1L B-...
~~·;;YI
Modern Methods
of
Teaching
Political Science
Prem Lata Sharma
SARUP&SONS
NEW DEUII-110002
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Published by
SARUP&SONS
4740/23, Ansari Road, Darya Ganj
New Delhi-11 0002
Ph. :3281029,3244664
Modern Methods of Teaching Political Science
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1st Edition : 2002
ISBN- 81-7625-305-7
Printed in India
Published by Prabhat Kumar Sharma for Sarup & Sons, Laser Type
setting at Mayank Printers and Printed at Roshan Offset Press, Delhi.
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Preface
In the modern scientific and teclmological, industrial world the teaching
of political science has acquired a very important dimension. Besides
theoretical background, lesson in practical politics through student
politics, seminars. workshops and elections, can he given.
There topics have been discussed very lucidly in this book
- Editor
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Contents
v
Preface
I. Teaching of Political Science
2. The Political PrinciQle 18
J Ibe ~olitical Method 21
4. Two ExQeriments in Teaching Political Science 40
5. Training for Teaching Political Science 50
6. Organizations and Teaching of Political Science 65
7. The Problem of Bias in Teaching Political Science 81
8 ~olilical ~allies and Elections 96
9 Earliamcnt and Ministers 116
10 I ocal GoYernmen! 139
II. Judicia!Y and Government in Great Britain 155
12. Public Administration and Policy Studies 172
13. The Future of Teaching Political Science 193
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Teaching of Political Science
Few political theorists show any interest in the political education of
the child: and those who do are usually pessimistic about the value of
introducing political theory into the school curriculum. Miller, • for
example, argues that 'children can be given only the most simplified
account of governmental institutions, and hardly any notion of the actual
charact>r of political activity'. At best we can teach only a purely
descriptive 'civics' in which we tell 'school children about such things
as the formal relations between central and local government, the
methods of election of MPs and local councillors, the distinctive work
of different officials, and so on'. And whilst Miller believes that 'it is
better to have this knowledge than not to have it', he recognizes that it
'provides only a static picture of institutions, which will certainly not,
in itself, provide only a static picture of institutions, which will certainly
not, in itself, provide any training in social values'. And it is a person's
general social values, rather than his civic knowledge, which determine
the quality of his citizenship.
Oakeshott took a similar view of the necessary limitations upon
the form of political knowledge which can be taught to the young. The
most that can be offered to them is 'an introduction to the current
activities of governments and to the relevant structures and practices
with some attention to the beliefs and opinions which may be held to
illuminate them.' But in childhood, this knowledge must remain inert:
it is a stock of' ideas, beliefs, images, practices', not a working capital.
It is 'not, perhaps, a very inspiring study and in its more dessicatcd
passages ... unlike Greek irregular verbs in holding out no evidence of
• J D.B. Miller, The Nature ofP olitics (Harmondsworth: Penguin. 1965) pp. 275-6
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2 Modern Methods of Teaching Political Science
better things to come'. • However, for Oakeshott, this somewhat
unpromising study of politics is no more misleading or tedious than
much else which has to be learned in school. His conception of political
education hangs together with his general view of schooldays as a stage
of education in which much has to be learned 'without the point of
learning it being evident to the learner.'••
This mechanical view of schooling as a period for acquiring
information without much understanding of its value is at odds with
the currently child-centred orientation of educational theory. Nowadays,
few educationists dissent from Whitehead's condemnation of the rote
learning of' inert ideas'. And if, in practice, schools are not always the
happy, exciting institutions which are idealized in educational literature,
most teachers pay lip-service to the notion that the young child's
schooling should be adventurous, relevant, meaningful, related to his
present concerns and not merely a preparation for a distant future adult
life. He should be capable of understanding what be is asked to learn:
indeed, this prescription that the child should understand what he learns
seems to entail that he should also exercise some degree of choice over
what he studies in school. And th.is conclusion is hard to reconclte with
Oakeshott's claim that 'at school we are, quite properly, not permitted
to follow our own inclinations'. Thus, it seems that we must either rule
out meaningful political education in schools or we need a conception
of politics which can be assimilated to child-centred educational theory.
It has been a weakness of much child-centred education that it
has applied too literally the slogan, 'We teach children, not subjects.'
Much of educational value has followed from widespread acceptance
of the sentiments underlying this view: fewer children go 'unwillingly
to school' and schools are happier places than they often were half a
century ago. But a less desirable consequence of this slogan has been a
tendency to 'dissolve the curriculum' and to pay insufficient attention
to the epistemological structure of the forms of knowledge and
experience which ought to characterize the educated life in civilized
communities. And because of this awareness that the curriculum has
been unduly neglected, there is a danger that the educational pendulum
might swing towards an extreme subject-centredness. It is fortunate,
therefore, that educational theory is increasingly influenced by the work
• M. Oakcshon, Rationalism in Politics and Other EJsays (london Methuen. 1962)
p.326.
" Ibid., pp. 315·16
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Teaching of Political Science 3
of two psychologists (Piaget and Bruner) whose interest is in both the
intellectual development of the child and the structure of human
knowledge. It has generally bee:! assumed that Piaget's greatest
contribution to education is as a psychologist. In fact, he has approached
the problem of the development of intelligence as an !epistemologist
His primary interest has been in the logic of knowledge, and his
experiments have been designed to demonstrate, not the development
of intelligence in vacuo, but how intelligence develops in relation to
the growing understanding of scientific concepts in particular areas of
knowledge. Hence, to attempt to apply Piagetian theory to education is
to be committed, in part to an examination of the forms of knowledge
one is trying to teach, no less than to an examination of the child's
psychology. Briefly, Piaget implies that the learning of concepts in a
discipline passes through three stages. There is a pre-operational stage
when the learner finds it difficult to focus upon more than one variable
in a problem at a time. Secondly, there is a concrete operational stage
in which the Ieamer is pre-occupied with ca~gorizing and classifying
his experience in concrete terms; building his concrete experience of
phenomena into abstractions or concepts. Finally, there is a formal
operational stage when concepts and principles are used in the
hypothetical and abstract thinking characteristic of mature disciplinary
thought. Piagetians have often attached age norms to these stages: two
to five years, five to eleven years and eleven-plus respectively. Recently
there has been a tendency to play down the notion that the Piagetian
stages are age-dependent and to stress instead the more valuable
conception that these define a necessary sequence through which the
Ieamer must pass in approaching any discipline for the first time at
whatever age. •
The realization that Piaget is saying important things about the
logical character of academic disciplines has comr. somewhat later than
the grasp of what he is saying about the mental characteristics of the
Ieamer. This later development owes much to the work of Bruner and
his associates. The Piagetian conception that mastery of a subject must
depend upon stages of development which the child is usually passing
through in the primary and early secondary years has led Bruner to argue
that it is possible (and, indeed, necessary) to teach the fundamental
• Summary accounts of the work ofPiaget C'!JI be found in: W.H. Maier, Three Theories
of Child Development (New York: Harper & Row, 1965) Ch. 3; J.H. Flavell, The
Dcvelopmemal Psychology ofJ ean Piaget (princeton: Van Nostrand, 1962). A more
difficult account oft he developmental stages can be found in Pia get's own Ligica and
PsycholoKJ•( Manchester University Press, 1953).
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4 Modern Methods of Teaching Political Science.
concepts of any discipline to children at any age. In The Process of
Education he wrote: 'We begin with the hypothesis that any subject can
be taught effectively in some intellectually honest fonn at any stage of
development'. • These objectives are to be pursued by a 'spiral
curriculum.' The circle of fundamental concepts and principles are
acquired on the ground floor of one's education. Educational growth at
different stages of schooling is then achieved, not by introducing the
Ieamer to distinctively new concepts and principles, but by applying
these first principles to more difficult and complex material. On the
spiral analogy, being educated involves climbing a spiral staircase,
returning again and again to the same point of view, but ever higher in·
the spiral with the wider perspective upon experience which this makes
possible. Fundamental concepts and principles are used to analyse
material of increasing difficulty and complexity. Bruner's confidence
in the possibility of introducing young children to disciplinary study
without destroying its integrity is grounded upon the conviction that
the fundamental ideas in the sciences and the humanities are both
powerful and simple and that their key concepts and principles are
intimated even in the behaviour of very young children. On this view,
the task facing teachers of the young is not the simplification of abstruse,
scholarly subject-matter, but rather a development of principled
understanding of what is essentially simple and fundamental to human
experience. Thus, in the social disc.iplines, Economics, Sociology and
Politics, for example, we are confronted not with the problem of reducing
explanations of complicated 'adult' institutions into the vocabulary of
children, but with identifying those aspects of their own behaviour which
require explanation in the language of economics or sociology or politics.
In political tenns this means that we are faced with the problem of
identifying that area of children's behaviour which is political in
character, and not with the dilemma of how to explain the functions
and operations of things like Parliament, the Cabinet, the Civil Service,
local government, the assize or magistrate's court, or the United Nations
Association; in short, the materials of traditional 'civics.'
If Bruner is right in thinking that it is possible to teach any
discipline to any child, this means that it ought to be possible to
introduce politics into the school curriculum. The only sound objection
to the application of Bruner's thesis to politics would follow from a
• See J. S. Bruner, n1e Process of £ducario11 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
t963); also. Towards a Tlreoryof!nsrrucrion (Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
t966).
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Teaching ofP olitical Science 5
demonstration that the phenomena of politics form no part of the
experiences of children. Since children count, measure, add, subtract,
live in rectangular houses, drink from cylindrical glasses, and so on,
mathematics presents no problem to those educationists who wish to
relate teaching to the experiences of the child. The concrete
manifestations of this subject are available for inspection daily and from
an early age. Similarly, since young children soon learn to regulate their
behaviour in accordance with the laws of physics, and since simple
experiments to illustrate the working of physical laws can easily be
constructed from everyday objects, physical science is taught increasingly
in the primary school. But what about the institutions and modes of
behaviour which constitute the data of the social disciplines: in
particular, how far do children have experi~nces which could be
described as political?
Traditionally, political education has focused upon politics as a
macro-activity: civics has been parliamentary-oriented and education for
citizenship has been a preparation for things to come. What has been
taught has been remote from the Ieamer's interests and concerns: it has,
therefore, been impossible to use his own experience as a point of
departure or to exemplify the principles being taught. Hence, in order
to 'Brunerize' political education a concept of politics is required which
locates it within the experience of the child.
Oddly enough, despite their own conclusions that political
education in schools can only offer the somewhat unappetizing diet of
traditional Civics, both Oakeshon and Miller point a way out of this
dilemma. Thus, Miller argues that 'politics is a basic human activity
which makes its appearance wherever there are people and rules. It may
be seen in small compass in a tennis club or a dramatic society, and in
its widest scope in the manoeuvrings of the cold war'. • Similarly,
Oakeshott writes: 'politics I take to be the activity of attending to the
general arrangements of a set of people whom chance or choice has
brought together. In this sense, families, clubs and learned societies have
their politics'.•• This suggests that we might find politics at work in
the experience of children much less remotely than through the
governmental apparatus of the local community and the state. For, from
this micro of view, even schools have their politics. They have to be
governed; they have their conflict of interests. There are rules for the
•
• Op. cit., p. 290 .
.. Op.cit.,p.ll2
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