The pedagogical intentions of a course on the international relations of the Middle East can be said to be threefold: 1) it should convey to the student a minimal amount of factual information about the Middle East, 2) it should possess a degree of analytical focus sufficient to explicate and penetrate beyond sheer information and 3) it ought to possess sufficient conceptual structuring so as to enhance the possibility of the student being able to transcend a) time, i.e., getting beyond the immediate present and b) space, i.e., how is Middle Eastern international relations similar or dissimilar to other areas. All three of these elements are perhaps inevitably present in some degree in any effort to deal with the totality of Middle Eastern international relations but three different kinds of syllabi do appear to emphasize each element. Thus a syllabus which presents Middle Eastern international relations largely in chronological order with an emphasis upon the twentieth century will clearly maximize the students’ factual grasp as well as having the advantage of dealing with events and issues in their “natural” as opposed to analytical relationships. On the other hand, an issue-oriented syllabus would seem to foster analytical focus by increasing the saliency of events and compelling explanation. Finally, the adoption of an abstract conceptual schema and the attempt to apply it in the Middle Eastern situation would seem to hold the promise of getting beyond a preoccupation with the present and past as well as possibly relating the Middle Eastern situation in the student’s mind to other world problem areas. Three alternative syllabi embodying these three different foci are presented here: 1) a chronological one, 2) an issue-oriented one and 3) a conceptually oriented one.
