Andy Mullan and Sanin Adnan

Politics concepts may need links to reality

Political scientists from all over the world met in Washington, D.C. this week to discuss whether college students taking political science courses are able to take the concepts learned in the classroom and apply them to real-world situations. At the Annual American Political Science Association Meeting entitled "Mobilizing Democracy," some professors said they would characterize their students as generally apathetic and unaware of the current events that are relevant to their course of study, according to an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Members of the APSA panel found they could better engage their students civically and intellectually by integrating articles from The New York Times into their classroom discussions, The Chronicle reported. "We professors have a duty to teach the academic literature and its reasonable applications in the world of politics," University Politics Prof.