Dialogues concerning Natural Politics: Guide for Instructors
Suggestions for using the Dialogues in the classroom
One of the goals of Dialogues concerning Natural Politics is to promote in-class discussion. The topics addressed by the characters in the Dialogues are relevant to several different fields of political inquiry, such as political philosophy, political theory, political science, economics, and political economy. The purpose of this guide is to offer some suggestions to instructors in these fields for maximizing the pedagogical value of the Dialogues.
The book argues against the assumption, typically employed in the fields of political analysis, that policymakers are epistemically privileged, and defends the alternative assumption that, with respect to the knowledge required to discharge their political tasks effectively, policymakers are no more knowledgeable than their constituents. More than this, however, the Dialogues are designed to leave readers thinking about and, hopefully, inclined to debate these (and other) profound issues. Many of the topics raised in the Dialogues are purposely left unresolved, as typically happens in a conversation among friends, leaving room for further discussion and debate in a classroom setting.
Although the book defends a particular conclusion about the method appropriate to political analysis, it leaves room for disagreement with this conclusion, and carefully avoids taking particular stances on substantive political matters. Indeed, the book is critical, in about equal measure, of both the left and right endpoints of the political spectrum. The method of analysis defended in the Dialogues favors no political philosophy or party.
The Dialogues offer a model of civil discourse concerning various fraught political controversies. In an era of political polarization, the book offers a reminder of what genuine civic (and civil) discourse looks like. Despite the contentious nature of several issues discussed in the dialogue, the characters never forget that their friendship is more important than their political differences.
Each chapter (or “book”) of the Dialogues addresses a more or less distinct topic or problem of political analysis. Please refer to the brief synopses at the head of each book for a summary of the problems and topics discussed therein. The chapters can thus be read either individually, in combination with other individual chapters, or as parts of the integrated whole. Each chapter concludes with suggestions for further reading. These additional materials are not necessary to understand the Dialogues, but might be incorporated in a lesson plan to provide students with a more comprehensive perspective on a particular topic. Indeed, a syllabus for a class in any of the disciplines of political analysis might be constructed by combining Dialogues with careful selections from the suggestions for further reading. Each chapter also includes a set of discussion questions that might be either assigned as homework, employed as exam questions, or used to promote further dialogue and debate in the classroom.
Teaching Strategies
The following teaching strategies may be deployed either separately or in various combinations.
Perhaps the easiest – not to mention, the most fun and engaging – way to teach the Dialogues is simply to re-create the conversation in class, while pausing at appropriate moments to encourage reflection upon and discussion of the relevant points. There are several different ways this might be done. There are also several different assignments that might be given to students to improve and build upon their understanding of the material.
Instructors might assign each of the characters to particular students and ask the students to play their assigned character’s parts in class. To ensure that every student has an opportunity to participate, instructors can rotate and re-assign characters to different students either from one class session to the next or from one chapter to the next. Alternatively, students might be split into four teams, each team being assigned to present a particular character’s role. The character’s lines might be split among the team members or each team might designate a particular member to speak the character’s lines. The assignment of a team to a particular character might be either maintained or re-assigned from one class or chapter to the next.
To encourage students to learn to identify arguments and their parts, instructors might assign students to re-state one or more of the arguments expressed conversationally in the Dialogues as a formal argument. Students could be asked to explicate the premises and conclusion of the argument, and to provide any unstated implicit premises necessary to make the argument valid or cogent. Students assigned to a particular argument might be grouped together and assigned to share, discuss, and critique each other’s work, with the aim of settling on a consensus analysis of the argument. Each group could then present their analysis to the class and open the floor to further discussion from classmates.
As in a formal debate setting, students might be asked to develop additional arguments in defense of – or, for that matter, against – a position presented by a particular character. The supplemental material outlined in the “For Further Reading” section of each chapter will help students improve their understanding of the relevant material. Such an assignment might be made either in advance of a particular class discussion, so that students enter class prepared to offer additional arguments, or as a post-discussion homework assignment.
The discussion questions at the end of each chapter might be used to stimulate further debate in the classroom. Some questions are of the “What does the book say about X?” variety. These questions might be appropriate for homework assignments or exam questions in lower-level courses. However, many of the questions are designed to encourage students to think beyond, to form their own opinions about, and even to challenge the content of the Dialogues. These questions might be more appropriate for discussion in either introductory or more advanced courses, or may be suitable as either homework assignments or exam questions, or as potential term paper topics. Instructors should also encourage students to develop their own questions about the arguments of the Dialogues and to pose these questions to each other, as another method of promoting in-class discussion.
Of course, the Dialogues are intended to encourage more than mere contemplation and discussion. The book presents a model of civil civic dialogue that might inform student’s interactions regarding political matters, both in and out of the classroom, especially in online contexts. The characters in the Dialogues needle, make fun of, and criticize each other with little mercy. They generally pull few punches in their arguments, but each takes their lumps, and the conversation never descends into hatred or personal animosity. Instructors might ask students to think about and discuss the relative value of the characters’ conversational model, compared to the more vitriolic approach to political discussion that has become increasingly common in recent years, as a method of learning, especially from one’s peers, and of moderating destructive political polarization.