Teaching Socialism

[NonNobisSolum]

I became a Socialist during college and became a socialist organizer shortly after. Sine then, I've worked full-time as a labor organizer. So I have certainly done my fair share of research and fact finding. My short-term goal is to become a Professor at my local community college and teach courses on socialism. One requirement for teaching new courses at the school is to create a course curriculum and have it approved by the board. I'm finding it increasingly difficult to condense such a broad and all encompassing subject into an easily digestible curriculum for the board and students alike. I've searched the internet in hopes of finding a professor who teaches Socialism or examples of course outlines that I could use as a guiding foundation to build my class on to no avail.

I'm hoping that my fellow brothers and sisters on Revleft could help put me in the right direction.

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

[thesadmafioso]

What sort of approach did you have in mind? I feel like you probably need something quite broad for the sake of general appeal and ease in teaching it, but at the same time you still need to establish some sort of structure so as to not simply become overwhelmed with the mass of content to convey. You are also working with an audience of community college students, so you really don't want to get too in depth in any approach.

I could see something like a class on the general theory or the history of socialism working out well enough. Either gives you a solid enough basis from which to work while still providing you with a notable degree of leverage in still touching on the other.

For theory, you could throw together a few presentations of the major theories exposed in seminal works like the communist manifesto and capital. I'm sure that dialectical materialism and historical materialism could easily take up a few classes in themselves. From there you could explain the alterations made to them by Lenin and other thinkers of the time and end it on something like the theoretical conflicts between Trotsky and Stalin. Some Gramsci and Althusser could also make for a decent overview on the concept of cultural hegemony as well.

And history is rather self explanatory, you could create a course focused on explaining the course of capitalism development throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, with a particular focus on revolutionary movements and events.

I don't really know though, that's just how I would approach the matter. I'm still in college myself and you probably have more knowledge on this subject matter than I do. Hopefully that's of some help though, and if not at the very least it can serve as something to avoid.

[Zealot]

Richard Wolff teaches Marxian economics classes, often comparing it with capitalism and showing the current economic crisis from a Marxist perspective and he does it in a way that is pretty easy to understand for most people. You can find his videos online (rdwolff.com) which are recorded inside his classrooms, I don't know if that's what you were looking for but hope it could help!

[A Revolutionary Tool]

Well what kind of class are we talking about? Like we're learning what socialism is, the many theories, the history?

[Klaatu]

Might be a good idea to teach a humanities class (such as history or political science) and run it as you see fit (that is, emphasizing the merits of socialism, while showing the shortcomings of capitalism, for example)

The professor basically "owns" his/her classroom, and sans interference from the upper admin, you should be good to go. Good Luck to you!