A Course on Athenian Democracy that Invites Reflection on Students’ Place in the American Democracy

Owen C. Cramer (Colorado College)

In the mid 1990s, after teaching Greek history in various formats for 30 years, I determined to focus more clearly on the institutions of democracy, and to encourage students to reflect, as part of the course, on the current state of the American democracy and their position in it. This was provoked in part by the recent 2500^th anniversary of Cleisthenes’ reforms, celebrated by American classicists for example in the Demokratia volume edited by Josh Ober and Charles Hedrick (Princeton UP 1996), and by my own surge of neighborhood activism regarding a much-loved hike-and-bike trail along a historic railroad right-of-way and urban creek.

The result was a new course number and description:  Classics 250—Athenian Democracy, with readings (in the 5 iterations so far: the sixth will take place in November-December 2006) from Aristotle’s Ath. Pol., Herodotus and Thucydides, various Athenian dramatists and theorists and modern historians from Peter Green to Donald Kagan. Students are also required to “inventory [their] own political practice and theory: take the political compass questionnaire at http://www.politicalcompass.org/ and look at the Pew Center typology at http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=242 .”

During a number of iterations of the course, students have been required to attend meetings which I thought to be the modern equivalents of the activities of the Ecclesia and Boule and the up to 140 boards of ten, annually selected by (almost universally) random allotment, that did the work of Athenian democracy. For each meeting submitted for credit, the student has been required to submit a “reflection piece” either to the course e-mail folder or to the class in an oral presentation. Sometimes, we have gone together to the Colorado Springs City Council meeting and I have introduced the class to these local politicians: to the class I have emphasized that Colorado Springs today is about as large, in population and—if we include the county—land area as Periclean Athens.

In 2004, the start of the course—in the Colorado College block system—coincided with the national election, and, after orientation on Monday, I required the students to participate in appropriate roles in the election. I myself did GOTV work for my party, but (it turned out) none of the students were so minded or prepared. They reported in course on their efforts to vote (significant and controversial delays were experienced in the principal campus voting precinct), on their detached or enthusiastic perusal of TV election returns, and (in one case of an outstanding Chinese exchange student) on the alienating experience of watching the American political apparatus in action. Post-election discussion was an interesting mix of happy reflection by Republican students with despair by others (including myself, with a certain professional restraint on my part).

The 2006 version of the course begins on November 27, safely after the mid-term elections and with no legislatures likely to be in session: even our local City Council and County Commission go into holiday recess. Students’ reflection on their democratic participation may take many forms, from the cool detachment I found last time in students whose Political Compass coordinates closely approximated 0,0, to (what I hope for) renewed engagement with American tradition in the light of Periclean ideals expressed in the Epitaphios. We’ll see.