Political Science Educator: volume 27, issue 1
Reviews
Justin Curtis
A perennial concern for instructors of Introduction to U.S. Government and Politics revolves around which textbook to assign. Among many considerations, instructors must weigh the methodological approach favored in the book, the coverage of key substantive topics, the supplementary teaching tools—including lecture slides, homework, and reading quizzes—that come with the book, and the book’s price as a burden on students.
In this short reflection, I share my experience relying on a heterodox book choice for an introductory course in American politics: Robert Putnam and Shaylyn Romney Garrett’s 2020 book The Upswing.
Political scientists are aware of the wide variety of textbook options available for use in intro to American courses (Knutson 2017; see also, Adams 1974 and Cushman 1993). However, as Knutson’s (2017) excellent review of textbooks makes abundantly clear, difference across these books are often marginal. Books differ in their overall approach—cultural, rational choice, civic engagement, or historical institutionalism—but the substantive content of each book is remarkably similar. Chapters are generally organized around the Founding, federalism, civil rights and civil liberties, public opinion (including ideologies, and political culture), branches of government (including the bureaucracy), state and local government, and policy-making. To varying extents, many of these books also provide students with tools to enhance engagement and critical thinking by interpreting data presented in tables and graphs and highlighting real-world examples of the topics in each chapter. These tools give students the opportunity to utilize the intellectual skills that political science courses often advertise: critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, and civic engagement.
The innovation of inexpensive or free electronic textbooks—including open educational resources (OER)—provides one alternative to traditional texts in introductory American politics courses. These books increase course engagement among students who report low levels of interest in politics and government (Kalaf- Hughes 2021). However, online textbooks are associated with lower average course grades than traditional textbooks (Slocum-Schaffer 2021), are less compelling for students who report ex-ante interest in politics (Kalaf-Hughes 2021), and suffer from the same omission of historically underrepresented groups as traditional textbooks (Brandle 2020). Thus, it is not clear whether these books are a worthwhile alternative.
I consistently wrestle with the observation that the vast majority of students in these courses are not political science majors and are, on average, not enthusiastic about taking a class on U.S. politics. The structure of many political science textbooks—both traditional and OER—presents the study of American politics and government as, simultaneously, 1) a positivist social science with an emphasis on empiricism in the form of public opinion, historical institutionalism, and political economy, and 2) a venue to become a model democratic citizen who understands the importance of civic engagement and the opportunities for engagement at various levels of government. However, the first approach is motivated by an implicit assumption that open empirical questions about U.S. government and politics are intrinsically interesting—thus neglecting the vital “logic of discovery” in the research and learning process (cf. Day and Koivu 2019). The second approach often provides little opportunity for students to internalize the value of democratic citizenship (see Brennan 2016 for an argument that students may find persuasive against the value of democratic citizenship altogether). For the last couple of years I have relied on a different style of book to motivate class sessions in my intro to American classes: Putnam and Garrett’s The Upswing (2020). Below I briefly review the text and then discuss one approach to using it in class.
The Upswing provides a compelling “sweeping historical perspective” (Putnam and Garrett 2020, p. 9) on the development of contemporary American politics—broadly defined. Its motivation lies in the glaring similarities between the United States’ Gilded Age and contemporary America that are summarized in a compelling narrative on pages 2 through 8 of the introductory chapter. Certainly, Putnam and Garrett are not the first writers or scholars to draw this connection, but their introduction provides students with opportunities to reflect on broad political conditions that have evolved slowly since the Gilded Age. The author’s fundamental proposition is that the twentieth century is best understood as a long move away from and then back towards the conditions of the Gilded age; they term this evolution and devolution the “I-We-I” century. This central thesis is summarized in a simple curve shape embedded into the cover image of the book that tracks trends in economic, political, social, and cultural change over the course of the twentieth century. The curve is an inverted-U, and the repeated appearance of this shape throughout the book provides students with multiple opportunities to engage with a variety of presentations of data, thus fulfilling one of the core learning objectives of many intro to American courses: quantitative social science reasoning.
The book proceeds, chapter by chapter, to uncover the “I-We-I” trend in the evolution of economics, politics, society, and culture, respectively. Each of these chapters is nicely conceptualized, and draws on monumental sources of data, both quantitative and qualitative. The authors then turn to race and gender as potential limits to the early twentieth century movement towards a “We” understanding of American identity. They consider that these dimensions of identity may have been at the heart of the faltering that pushed the U.S. back towards an “I” identity since about the 1960s. Each of these chapters provides a context for students to see the mechanisms of government, policy-making, elections, public opinion, identity politics, social movements, interest groups, and political parties. Rather than treating these topics as pedagogical ends themselves, they are the setting for a compelling narrative about how the U.S. political system—broadly defined—became what it is today. These topics also serve as potential solutions to many of the problems that students may be interested in or affected by. As these topics are presented contextually in Putnam and Garrett’s work, class time can then be devoted to both consider the implications of these institutions or behaviors on the “I-We-I” curve and in other contexts more traditionally found in the American politics classroom.
A culminating experience that I have used The Upswing to build students toward is a “American political culture project.” Students are tasked with 1) identifying and conceptualizing an economic, political, social, cultural, racial, or gendered problem in contemporary America, 2) tracing the origins of the problem through the “I-We- I” century discussed in The Upswing, 3) identifying how the United States began to solve this problem in the mid-twentieth century, and 4) exploring what actions would need to be taken today to solve it. This project enables students to put themselves and the issues they care about into the context of American political development. In relatively small course sections, this assignment culminates in a presentation where students can share their ideas with their peers. In larger sections, where presentations are not feasible, I have used short essays or templated worksheets for students to present their ideas to me. Student have presented projects about reproductive rights and connections between the Civil Rights Movement and Black Lives Matter, but also less typical subjects such as the teenage experience in popular culture and transportation infrastructure. The range of topics with which students engage and the investment they make in the project is unlike any assignments I’ve used connected to traditional intro to American textbooks. Facilitated by The Upswing as the central reading material in the semester, students plug their interests and themselves into American government and politics as agentive participants who can identify problems and build potential solutions.
With its emphasis on a singular historical narrative, its reliance on data-driven explanations, and its timely framework of political, economic, and social upheaval, The Upswing provides students with a compelling context to becoming introduced to American government and politics. While traditional textbooks emphasize topics, modules, vocabulary, and review questions, using The Upswing in a classroom provides students with an insight into the causes and effects of everyday politics and pushes them to place themselves in the political narrative of the United States rather than watching it unfold from afar.
References
Adams, William C. 1974. “Introductory American Government Textbooks: An Anatomical Analysis.” PS: Political Science & Politics 7(3): 260-261.
Brandle, Shawna M. 2020. “It’s (not) in the Reading: American Government Textbooks’ Limited Representation of Historically Marginalized Groups.” PS: Political Science & Politics 53(4): 734-740.
Brennan, Jason. 2016. Against Democracy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Cushman, Reid. 1993. “Textbooks, Technologies, and Tocqueville: Alternatives for Introductory American Government.” PS: Political Science & Politics 26(2): 223-227.
Day, Christopher and Kendra L. Koivu. 2019. “Finding the Question: A Puzzle-Based Approach to the Logic of Discovery.” Journal of Political Science Education 15(3): 377-386.
Kalaf-Hughes, Nicole. 2021. “Reaching Students with Low Interest: Subject Matter Interest and Perceptions of Open Educational Resources in an Introductory American Government Course.” Journal of Political Science Education 17(sup. 1): 459-485.
Knutson, Katherine. 2017. “US Government Textbook Review.” PS: Political Science & Politics 50(2): 536-541.
Putnam, Robert and Shaylynn Romney Garrett. 2020. The Upswing: How America Came Together a Century Ago and How We Can Do It Again. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Slocum-Schaffer, Stephanie A. 2021. “Is it REALLY All That? The Impact of the Digital Textbook in Introductory Political Science Classes.” Journal of Political Science Education 17(sup. 1): 440-458.
Justin Curtis is a lecturer in the Department of Political Science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Published since 2005, The Political Science Educator is the newsletter of the Political Science Education Section of the American Political Science Association. All issues of the The Political Science Educator can be viewed on APSA Connects Civic Education page.
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