Article #2 in a Series >>>>> Essential Information, >Micro-Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education< >>>>> Political Science

So wretched is the education in the Minneapolis Public Schools that I have been motivated to put my talents as a teacher and researcher into motion for the production of two monumental tomes:  Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education and Understanding the Minneapolis Public Schools:  Current Condition, Future Prospect.  The latter exposes the deficiencies of the Minneapolis Public Schools in factual, analytical, and philosophical detail;  the former delivers to my students the education in economics, political science, psychology, world religions, world history, American history, African American history, other ethnic history, literature, English usage, fine arts, mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics that they do not get in the public schools of Minneapolis.

 

In order to meet various student time frames and immediate needs as to knowledge acquisition, I have generated various versions of Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education, from very concise to the longest edition at approximately 500 single-spaced pages.  I am currently working with an exquisitely talented grade 11 student who has high capacity for information acquisition and is moving rapidly in quest of Advanced Placement mastery and superior ACT performance.  I have for her generated a middle page-range length of text in all chapters, which readers may find if they scroll on down to my blog entries of late winter and early spring in this very year of 2019.

 

In these next few entries I provide to my readers a list of essential terms to be understood in informational context for detail and significance, providing these for several of the chapters of Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education.

 

Please, then, peruse the first list, pertinent to a middle page-range version of my chapter on political science:

 

>>>>> 

 

Essential Information, Micro-Fundamentals of an Excellent Liberal Arts Education

 

Political Science

 

Gary Marvin Davison, Ph. D.

Director, New Salem Educational Initiative

 

I.   Definition  >>>>>  the study of who gets what, when, where, why, and how

 

II.  Major Political Philosophers

 

Essential terms, to be understood in historical context for detail and significance:

 

Socrates

Plato

Aristotle

Confucius

Jean Jacque Rousseau

Thomas Hobbes

Edmund Burke

Montesquieu

John Locke

 

III.  History

 

Essential terms, to be understood in historical context for detail and significance:

 

prehistoric government 

Athens

imperial government

aristocratic government

monarchical government

modern democracy

 

republic

               

democratic

autocratic

 

Left-Right Continuum >>>>>

 

Leftist Revolutionary (Radical Left)---                                   

Communism

Radical Socialism

 

Liberal Capitalist Democracy---

Democratic Socialism

Center-Left Liberal Capitalism

Center-Right Liberal Capitalism

 

Authoritarian/Military Dictatorship---

 

Reactionary (Radical Right)---

Fascism

Nazism

…………………………………….

 

Totalitarianism

Left   (Soviet Union under Stalin)

Right (Germany under Hitler)

 

IV. United States Government

 

Essential terms, to be understood in historical context for detail and significance:

 

Articles of Confederation (1781)

United States Constitution (1789)

 

Separation of Powers/  Balance of Power/ Checks and Balances

Branches

(Executive, Legislative, Judicial)

Levels      

(Federal/ State/ Local)

 

Cabinet

 

United States Congress

Senate

House of Representatives

 

Supreme Court

Judicial review

 

Electoral College

 

Political Spectrum

 

>>>>> 

Revolutionary---

(Radical Left)                                          

Communists                                                                                                                                       

Radical Socialists

 

Democratic Socialists---

 

Liberal Democrats---

 

Moderate Democrats---

 
Independents (frequently moderate,
may be anywhere on the political spectrum)---

Moderate Republicans---

 

Conservative Republicans---

 

Reactionaries---

Fascists

White Nationalists