Teaching the International Dimension of American National Government

Extract

Despite enormous changes in the global circumstances that impinge on American government and despite a growing recognition that the undergraduate curriculum must be internationalized, relatively little has been done to incorporate a global perspective in the one place where political science teachers can reach very large numbers of undergraduate students—the introductory American national government course. The internationalization of the American economy, the developing interdependence between the United States and other countries, the growth of local-international links—these phenomena have scarcely touched the bedrock political science course.

Textbooks for the introductory American government course reflect this neglect of the international dimension. They typically allude to the international factor briefly in the context of the president's powers in conducting foreign relations and discuss it more extensively in a chapter on “Foreign Policy” or “Foreign and Defense Policy.” As a practical matter, however, this chapter is usually near or at the very end of the book, which many teachers and students probably never reach. A perusal of various current textbooks confirms the conclusion made by a 1981 survey of 50 leading textbooks that very few of the books recognize the interdependence phenomenon or the importance of global circumstances. Apart from textbooks, learning packages designed for the American government course on such topics are rare.

To expose students to the international dimension of American national government, the writer conducted a special project in two sections of his American national government course during the spring 1988 semester. The following instruction sheet was given to the students.