There seems to be little question that the ethical conduct of public servants is important to our form of government. However, transmitting this to students in public administration programs is quite another matter. Designing and teaching an ethics course is difficult, but not for the reasons that one might expect.

The effective nomination of presidential candidates has moved from the national conventions themselves into the process of delegate selection. While much has been written on the political causes and effects of this development, less attention has been paid to describing the underlying mechanics of the methods by which political parties in the states now choose their delegations. What follows is a typology, stripped of political considerations, of the methods used in 1988.

Most of the literature in the field of international security studies does not focus on the details of battlefield operations or the use of weapons in combat. The American military is usually left alone to devise effective tank tactics or solutions to the problems encountered as pilots attempt to place bombs on a target. Scholars increasingly realize, however, that theoretical work must reflect the reality of the battlefield and likely operational constraints. For example, recent explorations of the intricacies of nuclear operations have influenced the way analysts view the problem of deterrence. To be useful, theories and policy prescriptions must respond to the prevailing conditions on the battlefield.

When it becomes necessary to integrate operational considerations into theoretical work, scholars often turn to members of the military to determine if highly touted weapons perform “as advertised,” or to discover the potential limitations of tactics described in current manuals. Within the constraints created by issues of secrecy, officers and enlisted personnel usually are flattered by the interest taken in their profession and are forthcoming in supplying detailed answers to operational questions. Orgahized tours of military facilities also provide an opportunity to examine military hardware at close range and often lead to a fruitful exchange of ideas, especially after the conclusion of the formal presentations. Still, the information gathered from contacts with soldiers and sailors is largely anecdotal and limited to the general experiences of the individuals questioned.

It should not be surprising that freshmen students in an introductory political science course know little about the threat of nuclear war. Like a great percentage of the general public, they are unfamiliar with strategic options, weapons systems, technology, or even some of the ethical issues raised by the presence and possible use of such weapons. Some of these students tell me that they deliberately try to not think about such things because the realities are too horrible to contemplate. Others simply prefer to leave such matters to our leaders and “the experts” or, for whatever reason, are overwhelmed by the ennui which is a threat to any lecture session on any topic.

One way around the pitfall of routine boredom which can affect any college course is to vary the menu of activities; and one of the best learning devices to supplement lecture and written materials, I have found, is simulation. Simulation brings some aspects of reality—decision-making, interactions, the perspective of sitting in a seat of power, and others—into the classroom without claiming that this supposed “slice of life” can replicate the real world in every detail. Some of the processes and institutions of government—Congress, juries, city councils, mediation of labor disputes, and others—lend themselves well to the simulation and gaming format.

Constant change, unpredictable human behavior, and a complexity that defies mastery by any single student make international relations a field no one—least of all a beginner—can cope with by simply memorizing facts. One key to understanding international relations—whether for the college freshman or a professional researcher—is knowing how to ask the right questions. Constructing and using expert systems can be a highly instructional pedagogical tool in this regard.

Expert systems are programs that reach conclusions based on a set of rules that examine evidence derived either from a database or from responses entered by the user to a series of canned questions. To design a truly “expert” system—one that reaches conclusions as reliable as those of a human expert—is an extremely time-consuming task requiring not only, obviously, the participation of an expert to formulate the rules but also a topic that can be reduced to rules. Such an endeavor is not the goal here.

Instead, the goal here is the preliminary step of training students to ask the proper questions, an arena in which expert systems running on PCs can be set up to provide very pointed demonstrations. Indeed, this is easy enough so that students can easily be assigned the design of such a system themselves (see box).

Orange—In a play that recalled one of the darker moments in U.S. history, an Army Colonel walked across a dimly lighted stage Monday, handed a pistol to a lieutenant and ordered the man to put the gun to his head and pull the trigger.

“You can't be serious,” stammered the horrified lieutenant as his superior officer loudly repeated the order.

Upset and confused, the lieutenant let an awkward moment of silence pass, then he quietly told the colonel, a prosecutor: “I can't do it.”

So went the chilling climax of a morality play at Chapman College's Waltmar Theater on Monday as students from the freshmen seminar program moved the study of war and peace out of the classroom onto the stage….

This is how a local paper reported a play my class wrote and performed about the court martial of Lt. William Calley. As you may recall, William Calley was the Army Lieutenant who, during the height of the Vietnam war, led his platoon into MyLai 4, a small village in South Vietnam. Expecting to find heavily fortified North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers, Calley and his men instead encountered several hundred South Vietnamese civilians, most of them old men, women, children, and babies. The civilians were herded into groups. They were then shot. Calley was later court martialled in one of the most controversial trials in our nation's history.

The Advanced Placement (AP) program has been growing rapidly in the last decade. In 1987, a new AP program was begun in American Government and Politics and its impact is beginning to be felt in high schools and colleges across the country. However, there has been no objective assessment of the program communicated and discussed throughout the political science community.

To begin—what is the AP program? The Advanced Placement program offers the equivalent of introductory college courses which may lead to college credit upon satisfactory performance on an AP exam. The AP program is administered by the College Board which contracts with the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to operate the AP examinations. “About 31 percent of American secondary schools currently participate, serving approximately 17 percent of their college-bound students in this way. This use, by both schools and students, has been growing steadily in recent years” (Guide to the AP Program, 1986, p. 4).

The College Board highlights the positive aspects of the AP program for learning, education, and all concerned—students, teachers, and administrators. AP programs are considered part of society's effort to revitalize the educational system in the United States, especially in high schools and higher education. The quality and implications of the AP program are all positively portrayed. Yet, the implementation of the AP program has not been closely examined and publicly discussed.