Students Always Know Best

As a second-year Political Science student I would like to support the article written on Political Science by Campbell and Wilson last week. It's high time members of the teaching staff were asked to openly defend the bases of their work.

Staff members often say that students aren't really interested in such things, but isn't this an indictment of them (the teachers)? One of the objects of political science should be to produce people who are politically concious and articulate, but how can the present staff and present courses do that? Most of the staff scantily hide their bored conservatism under an academic cloak of 'objectivity'.

The standard of the courses in the Political Science department reflects the abilities of the staff. Their publishing activity seems to have been reduced to glossy class-handouts like Cleveland and Robinson's latest effort which I hear is going to be repeated by Brookes on American politics. Only Wainwright's course on Marx provokes any thought and political response.

The idea of a 'value-free' political science is absurd how can you have an 'objective' science of man's subjective world?

The next class at every stage in Political Science should be devoted to a discussion of the ideas put forward by Campbell and Wilson. Students might as well know where they stand before we sit finals.