The epigraph beginning this article came from a student in mystandard Introduction to Political Theory course at the end of thefall, 2005 semester. This course was offered at San Francisco StateUniversity (SFSU), a large (30,000 students), public, urbaninstitution and part of the California State University system. Thesize of the class was 45 students, typical for such an introductorycourse, 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 normallydispersed: there were some excellent students and some weak ones,especially with regard to the latter group's writing skills—a quitecommon occurrence at SFSU. Almost all of the students had completedat least one other core class (usually Introduction to AmericanGovernment or Comparative Politics) and were taking a politicalscience elective concurrently with the introductory political theorycourse.