The epigraph beginning this article came from a student in my
standard Introduction to Political Theory course at the end of the
fall, 2005 semester. This course was offered at San Francisco State
University (SFSU), a large (30,000 students), public, urban
institution and part of the California State University system. The
size of the class was 45 students, typical for such an introductory
course, consisting mostly of juniors and majors in political science
(since the course is a requirement for graduation for such majors).
The intellectual caliber of the students appeared to be normally
dispersed: there were some excellent students and some weak ones,
especially with regard to the latter group's writing skills—a quite
common occurrence at SFSU. Almost all of the students had completed
at least one other core class (usually Introduction to American
Government or Comparative Politics) and were taking a political
science elective concurrently with the introductory political theory
course.