Summer School Reflections

I just finished teaching my summer class. It was a great class, actually; one of the best I've ever had. Except with regard to teaching Rawls, whom they hated, and so I was forced to defend. Which is not how I want to spend two summer afternoons. I've decided to take a break from teaching Rawls, unless I teach a class on contemporary political thought. As punishment for their immense dislike of Rawls, I made each of them give their best argument for his theory of justice during their final oral exam.

Other observations from their oral exam: when asked which thinker they found most persuasive, at least half picked Tocqueville. Maybe they were just trying to get brownie points, but it worked.

One student picked Lincoln. He said that when his sisters visited this summer, they visited the Lincoln monument and read the speeches inside out loud on my recommendation. Again, brownie points.

My one regret: I didn't take advantage of the fact that my class on American political thought was set in DC--I should have scheduled our class on Lincoln to take place in the Lincoln Memorial; I should have scheduled the class in which we read Theodore Roosevelt to take place at the Roosevelt Memorial on Roosevelt Island. We should have read Jefferson at the Jefferson Memorial, too. Ah well.