California State University, Bakersfield
Political Science 300
Political Inquiry
Fall 1999

Professor: Dr. Michael Ault
E-mail: mault@csub.edu
Homepage: http://www.csub.edu/~mault
Office: DDH/B-109
Phone: (661) 664-2022
Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 9:30 to 10:30am
Monday 5:00 to 6:00pm
Appointments may be made at most other times

The contents of this document will affect your performance in this class and ultimately your academic career. To ensure that you understand the classroom policies, the course requirements, and my professional expectations, please read the entire document carefully. You are responsible for any changes that may occur during the course of the semester. You will be given a forty-eight hour notice of such changes, and any changes will be announced at the beginning of class. You will be held responsible for all announcements that are made in class. Additional copies of this document are available on my homepage.

Course Objectives

This course is designed to introduce students to the methods of political and social inquiry. Never in the history of the world has there been such a plethora of daily television, newspaper and popular magazine commentary on the status of society's political condition. In fact, it is often difficult to distinguish between a reasonable evaluation and a preposterous account -- the truth often lies behind a thick veil of rhetoric. As students of politics, however, our goal is to step back from the rhetoric and ask questions concerning the source and accuracy of political statements. But how do we decipher a true statement from an untrue statement? Or more simply, how do we distinguish between an opinion and a fact? This course is designed to teach students the conventional methods of evaluation and critical thinking associated with the social and behavioral sciences. To that end, you will become familiar with and be able to discuss and evaluate the following issues and questions:

1. What are the fundamental questions that political philosophy and political science try to answer?
2. Why do we have governments? What are their basic functions?
3. What are the basic ideologies in modern politics? How have classical liberalism and socialism been translated into contemporary ideologies?
4. How do democracies link mass and elite opinion?

Similarly, you will learn how to:

1. Differentiate between normative and empirical statements.
2. Formulate testable hypotheses by translating untestable statements into hypotheses that can be falsified or confirmed through the observation of behavior.
3. Read and construct tables and graphs.
4. Use a personal computer to test hypotheses and generate tables.
5. Understand the difference between association and causation.
6. Speak before the class.

Course Requirements

1. Labs 25%: There will be nine lab assignments. Each lab is graded either S (satisfactory) or U (unsatisfactory). Students receiving a U must do the lab over again until they receive a grade of S. All labs must be turned in on or prior to the date on the syllabus. Every late lab reduces your total lab grade. There are no excuses for late labs. This means illnesses, unexcused absences, and excused absences are not reasons for a late lab. If, therefore, you know you are going to be out of town (for example, you are in the band or on an athletic team that has travel scheduled for the day a lab is due), you must arrange to have your lab turned in prior to leaving. As no one knows when he/she might be ill or oversleep, it is always a good idea to turn in your lab at least one class period before the lab is due.

If you turn in all labs on time (whether they initially receive an S or a U) and ultimately receive an S on all labs, you will receive a minimum grade of 100 for 25% of the course. There is really no reason that each of you cannot accomplish this and this will insure that you will not fail this course. If you end up with one U, your lab grade will be 80 minus any points deducted for late labs. If you receive a U grade on more than one lab, this will give you a 0 on 25% of the grade. This will insure that you will fail this course.

A redo lab is due one week after the lab is returned to you. Labs returned later than this date will be considered late and five points will be deducted. If you are not in class when the lab is returned, the lab is still due one week from the date the lab was returned to the remaining members of the class.

2. Quizzes 25%: It is crucial to your education that you understand the material you are assigned to read. It is impossible to do well in this course if you just simply read the material without thinking about it. You must make sense of the readings by asking yourself questions about it. For example, What is the author saying? Does it make sense? What problems does it pose? The quizzes are designed to test: 1) whether or not you have read, and 2) whether or not you understand what you have read. There will be no make-up quizzes.

Therefore, there will be a quiz every Monday on the readings for the entire week. For example, the quiz on Monday, September 20, includes the readings for both September 22 and September 24. To put it simply, you must come to class every Monday morning prepared to take a quiz covering material to be discussed later in the week. The quizzes will be true-false, short answer, and multiple choice. Quizzes count for 25% of your grade.

3. Midterm 25%: There will be one midterm worth 25% of your grade. The test is multiple choice, short answer, and essay and covers labs, readings, and lectures. I highly encourage you to make use of my office hours to answer specific questions you may have concerning the material discussed in class. While I am available at most times, I encourage you not to wait until the morning of the exam to ask questions. If you have an excused absence for the midterm, a makeup exam will take place on the last day of class. If you have an unexcused absence for your midterm, you will receive a 0 for that test--this means you will fail the course.

4. Final Examination 25%: Your final exam will be comprehensive and will be on December 1, 1999 at 8:00am. There will be no rescheduling of the final unless you have 2 other exams on that day. The final exam counts for 25% of your total grade.

5. Absences and Late Arrivals: Roll is taken every class period and therefore you must sit in the seat assigned to you. Any student having more than 4 absences or a combination of 5 absences and late arrivals will be administratively dropped form the course with a grade of F. Students who miss four classes, more than one of which is unexcused, will have 10 points subtracted from their final grade. Students with perfect attendance will have 3 points added to their final grade. Students who miss only 1 class will have 2 points added to their final grade. As you can tell, attendance is extremely important; to do well in this class, you must be present. Please, do not try to stay away from class when you have not done the reading. Roll will be taken at 8:03am.

Number of Absences

Pts on/off   0* 1* 2   3   4#    5#
final grade    +3 +2  0 0 -10 -100
* Excused or unexcused
# More than one of which is unexcused

6. Class Participation: I expect all students to come to class prepared to answer questions on the assigned materials. This is a critical part of the learning process. Learning requires that you actively participate in the process. This means when reading the material, you should take notes and in class you should be ready to respond to questions that either your classmates or I put forward.

7. Personal Conferences: I have office hours and I strongly encourage you to take advantage of them to come and discuss any problems you may be having with this course or with University life in general. If you cannot see me during my scheduled office hours, please feel free to come by my office or schedule an appointment.

8. Summary: As you should be able to gather by now, this course is a difficult class. Because of the lab work, this class requires more work than other introductory classes. Therefore, if you are enrolled in this class just to get 5 hours credit toward your general education requirements and you do not wish to put forth the effort required to do well in the class, please drop the class now and take some other introductory course. It will save you grief.

On the other hand, you will learn in this class a set of skills that will be useful to you throughout your college career and hopefully your life. You will learn how to use a personal computer, how to read tables and graphs, how to develop and test hypotheses, and how to read materials and evaluate them on your own. You will also become familiar with several important political philosophers and also all of those in contemporary liberal social theory. This is the political theory that underlies our Constitution and provides the basis for many of our ideas, liberal and conservative, in politics.

Required Readings

Introduction to Political Science: Reason, Reflection, and Analysis. R. Kenneth Godwin and John C. Whalke. Harcourt Brace College Publishers. 1997.

Recommended Readings

Statistics Without Tears: A Primer for Non-Mathematicians. Derek Rowntree. Charles Scribner's Sons: New York. 1982.

Students With Disabilities

Any student requiring special accommodations must present his/her written request on or before the sixth day of class.

Policy on Cheating and Plagiarism

California State University, Bakersfield has a strict policy on cheating and plagiarism. Please familiarize yourself with the undergraduate catalog p. 53--it will be enforced!