Start of Winter Term (2026) Intro Lecture (Part 1)

Now that my latest major research project is completed, I hope to return to doing some regular, more substantial, blog posting.  The following is my first of such posts, to kick off the year 2026. 

This week I began the winter teaching term with my introduction lecture to 250 students in my third year course on the history of political thought.  In each course I teach I always begin the first hour of the course with some general "framing" reflections, insights I hope will prime the societal significance of the educative mission and the course content we cover in the months to come.  

The primary goal of this introductory lecture is really two-fold.  Firstly, to motivate students to get excited about their own intellectual development -- by engaging their curiosity and encouraging them to reflect on why they should care to learn about anything.  And, secondly, to get them excited about learning the specific course content (e.g. historical political thinkers).  

To do the latter I have explain why learning about, and engaging with, the thinkers of the past is so important.  In this course, which is themed around the history of political thought, I argue that the thinkers of past were important "problem-solvers" that attempted to theorize about the problems of their day, whether that be the political inequality that concerned Rousseau's democratic sensibilities, Burke's worries about the appeals to the abstract political ideals of the French revolutionaries, the existence and persistence of patriarchy (for feminist thinkers) or racial inequality (Douglass, Du Bois), or the exploitation and alienation of capitalism (Marx).

Taking the time and care to explain the motivation for studying the subject matter of a course is, I believe, the first and most important task of any instructor.  If this is not done well, I believe it will create significant challenges for many students that could have been avoided.  Perhaps nothing else derails the educational experience more than course content being presented in a boring or unmotivated fashion.  If students' engagement with the course material is low from the start, it is almost impossible to engage later on.  What typically happens, for the average student, is it starts somewhat higher, and then diminishes as the term progresses and other assignments/classes command their time and attention.  But hopefully their interest stays high enough to successfully get them through the course material.  

I think it is easy for instructors to function with the false belief that most undergraduates are as passionate about the course material as they themselves are.  The reality is that few, if any, of our students would choose to spend their lifetime and career studying these topics.  But, at least for a few years of their early adulthood, there is a unique opportunity for an instructor to stoke a passion for learning this material.  And this could have a formative impact on their learning and intellectual development.  

Getting students interested in course content is critical because highly motivated students tend to do better, academically.  But articulating the motivation for seriously engaging in political theory takes some time and care and attention.  Unlike topics in international relations (e.g. war/conflict) or Canadian politics (pick any example from the dysfunction of the day), the more abstract nature of political theory (especially when the course covers thinkers who have been deceased for a long time (centuries or longer) means that many students struggle to appreciate what the point of the intellectual exercise is.  Why study the ideas of the dead?  

If an instructor just starts unpacking the ideas and ideals of past thinkers, without framing the function or societal importance of the intellectual exercise, I believe many students will flounder.  This is an issue I am so passionate about I decided to write a book about it, drawing on 20 years of experience teaching the canon of Western political thought.

For my intro lecture this week I added a few new insights and themes into that introductory lecture.  I summarize them here.

I began the lecture with the following quote from Dunn.

It is very easy to illustrate and reinforce the point that humans do not really know what they are doing.  If I were  to ask students to think of any public policy issue, be it from local, provincial, federal or global politics, that they believe is wrong-headed there would a very lengthy list.  The list of bad policy decisions or other shortcomings of the "status quo" of our political life is likely to be much longer than the list they would be able to conjure if I asked them for examples of exemplary policy decision-making and strengths of our current political culture and institutions (there of course are many things in this latter category, but our minds do not conjure them as easily as our list of complaints!).  

The fact that we lack the wisdom to act sagely, at least collectively as societies, is not only a truism, but it is also absurd.  Given how high the stakes are in governance- for the economy, for public health, planetary health, future generations, the health of our democracies and human welfare more generally, it is absurd that we continue to fall so short on some many things.  Why is this so?  Or, perhaps more accurately, why does it at least seem so?... 

The rest of this lengthy post will be updated next week.

Cheers, 

Colin