POLITICAL THEORY AND ECONOMICS

Part 1:

As a student in primary and secondary school in Canada political studies occupied a very small part of the total curriculum. In grade ten, 1959-60, I remember taking an introductory Canadian politics, or civics course, as it was called then. History, of course, contained its share of political issues and history was a subject I took every year I was a student as far back as grade four or five in 1953 to 1955, at least as far back as I remember any history being taught to me.

In the autumn of 1964 I began my first and only course in politics at McMaster University. I was then a second year student majoring in history and philosophy. It was the last course I took in politics in my four years, or five years if I include my external studies from 1974 to 1988---of tertiary studies.

Part 2:

I did teach politics on many occasions from the 1970s to the 1990s. At the Ballarat College of Advanced Education politics was part of an introductory social science course which I taught for three years to several groups of students” 1967 to 1978. I also taught politics from 1989 to 1995 at the Thornlie College of Tafe in: (i) a course entitled 'Australian Government and Legal Systems,' AGLS as it was called. AGLS was largely a course to help Australians understand their political system, and (ii) matriculation politics for students wanting to go to university. It, too, was largely focused on the Australian political system.

During that time I amassed two large files of notes which, on retirement in 1999, I threw away. I tired of teaching this program as I tired of so many of the partisan political issues which came upon my plate from the media. But I did not tire of the issues raised in political philosophy, political theory, or sociological theory---all of which are deeply imbedded in politics of the non-partisan variety. I found these interdisciplinary fields stimulating.

Part 3:

In the first five years of my retirement from FT and PT teaching, 1999 to 2004, it became increasingly important to open a file on political theory. In the first week of September 2003 I opened two files of recently photocopied articles on political theory. It has now been more than 50 years(1959/60 to 2012/13) since I took that introductory civics class and the base of material here is beginning to reflect the issues that have concerned me since my student days in the mid-1960s.

By the time I retired I took little interest in partisan politics and the kinds of issues generated in that AGLS course and indeed most modern 'civics' courses. But political theory interested me and that is what is found here in these two files. Inevitably politics as a discipline of study has a sociological, a psychological, an historical and a religious component. The social sciences have become, as I say above, so very interdisciplinary. These two files contain the more purely political aspect of the social sciences, but it is an aspect of politics that has, as I also say above, virtually nothing to do with partisan politics and the range of issues that tend to occupy the media such as: the republic, senate powers, parties, minority groups, pressure groups, foreign and domestic policy, the wars here or the wars there, voting and the electoral process, the legal system, parliamentary processes, inter alia.

These two politics files are more concerned with the very general, the abstract, aspects of politics, basic ideas and conceptions behind the current establishments and systems. This is a more intellectual, a more philosophical, a more theoretical, approach to politics and its problems. The line, though, between theory and practice is not clear-cut. The application of this approach to writing about politics requires, as the International Teaching Centre advised me nearly twenty years ago, extreme care. They advised, in the last lines of their letter "not to make too free a use of such a method."(Letter to an Individual Believer, International Teaching Centre, 28 February 1985.) As yet, I have not been too involved in the application of this or any method in my formal writing. Time will tell what developments ensue in the political theory field.

I should also mention, in closing, that Volume 5 of my Philosophy files contains a great deal of political philosophy. So, too, do my dozen arch-lever files and 2-ring binders of Sociology Theory contain a good deal of relevant material for the area of political theory studies. Finally, in April 2013, I added a section on Economics and placed its contents in Volume 4, a sub-section of the two-ring binder, since that subject had no place in all my files.

Ron Price
27/12/’06 to 15/4/’13

Thanks!

Thanks, BrokenStudent, for your 'word' of appreciation. I don't get to this site as often as I'd like now that I'm going through my 70s---with my days at McMaster University nearly 50 years in the past.-Ron Price, Australia