Welcome to Century
of Revolution
POLS 3025 3.0
Ross Rudolph
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Introduction
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Ross Rudolph
S654 Ross
 Office hours: Monday and Wednesday,
1:30- 3 p.m., and by appointment
 736-5265 ext. 22564
 e-mail directed to rrudolph@yorku.ca
guaranteed a response within 24 hours
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PowerPoint presentations are available
for downloading on the course Web site
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Overview
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Announcements
Student survey
Big questions this course
addresses
Course organization
My teaching and learning
philosophy, or, my goals for this
course
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Announcements
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Reading for next Monday
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Christopher Hill, The Century of
Revolution, Part One 1603-1640
Write down 2-3 of what you consider to
be the most important distinguishing
features of Canadian government and
politics in 2007
Login to Moodle, and introduce yourself
to others in your online study group. On
Monday you will get a chance to meet
them
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Step 1
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Start by going to the following URL: http://moodle.arts.yorku.ca/
This will bring you to the following page
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Step 2
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To log in to moodle, click on the link “Login” at the top right corner of the page
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Step 3
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Login using your Passport York username and password
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Step 4
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Once you have logged in, select the course you are registered in. POLS 3025.
You are now registered in the course.
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Please note, if you do not know your Passport York account, please
contact helpdesk@yorku.ca .
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Student survey
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Many reasons students enrol in courses have
nothing to do with learning objectives: forget
those!
Significant learning and research both respond to
big questions
What are you looking to get out of this course:
what would you like, what do you expect, to
learn?
Introduce yourself to your online study group:
 Background in politics and political theory
 Specific interests in this course
 What you would like to know and be able to
do at the conclusion of this course
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Big questions
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Political theories
 are constructed
 frame the way we understand political issues
Seventeenth century witnessed the emergence
of our system of government
Some major issues
 When and why did people stop believing they
were ruled by divine right kings?
 How did doctrine of popular sovereignty
become established?
 When and why did shift occur from Christian
commonwealth to pursuit of private wealth
and national prosperity?
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Questions
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Fantasy echo
I am committed that you will never
regret asking a question
Different options
 Post
a question to your online
study group
 Lecture
 Office hours
 E-mail response within 24 hours
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Calculating final grade
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2 papers, first on material in first half, second on material in 2d half
 draft circulated to other member of study group, who gives
feedback
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What is main point of paper?
Strengths?
Suggestions for improvement?
final revised version, taking into account feedback (20%,30%)
Participation (25%)
 Your feedback on two written assignments
 Question to list, and contributions that advance the discussion
 Participation in class
 Periodic 1-minute papers
 At the end of the course, you will be asked to self-assess, citing
preceding kinds of evidence
Take-home final examination, covering whole course, distributed in
final class, with one week deadline (25%)
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Policy on unacademic
practice
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Rules require you to acknowledge and
cite source of materials not original with
you
Breaches of the rule are
theft: violation of intellectual property
 fraud: representing as your own what is
not
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Penalties
severe
 easily avoided
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Texts
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Required books available
for purchase at the bookstore
 for loan on reserve at Scott Library
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Pdfs of extracts on Course Website
Complete original Early English Books
online through York University Libraries
Importance of reading and discussing
with your online study group in advance
of classes in which texts are discussed
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Deep vs. surface learning
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Preparing democratic citizens is integral to liberal education
 Not a monopoly of political scientists
 Requires inculcation of distinct skills
 To be successful, political education must be transformative
Grades are not necessarily an index of learning
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Arizona State University experiments
Everyone’s sense of reality is constructed
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Deep learning only takes place when expectations fail
No one ever learnt anything by being told
Practical relevance of all this is that
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the way you get a good grade in this course is by trying as often
as it takes to master material, without penalty for repeated
attempts
study groups, assignments, and exam are all designed to
promote and assess you achievement of course learning goals
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Political theory as a
form of political action
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Politics is a species of practical
knowledge
Political theorists are intensely
partisan
 They
seek to advance a variety of
interests
 I.e., they don’t just say things, they
seek to do things
 Interpretation of theory is also
contested
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Political theory as
political education
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All theories make explicit the implicit
assumptions of their followers
Some theories seek to solve problems
Critical theories submit those
assumptions to critical scrutiny
The past is like a foreign country, even
an alien planet
Studying theory historically sensitizes
students to
difference between past and present
 present day diversity
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