Teaching

Teaching Tocqueville this week was great fun (who am I kidding--it's always great fun): I have a student whose family lives in an old-fashioned township in New Jersey (I didn't even know they had functioning townships there) and could explain the benefits of participating in a township first hand. Then there is a student from South Africa whose family was originally from Kenya. He explained that he was familiar with certain aspects of the aristocratic age, such as the property inheritance going to the first son--he is his family's first son and so stands to inherit all of their lands. And then there is a student who has been living in Hong Kong for the last several years. He could testify to China's problem of ignoring neighbors who are in trouble (something that Tocqueville would say associations help prevent in America).