[Book] Politics: an Introduction--First sight?

Folks,

I am now working on a class that I will need to brush up my knowledge on a very fundamental class of my field, Principles of Political Science.

Just thinking about the similar class I took when I was an undergraduate at the faculty of political science at Chulalongkorn university, I can still feel a freakingly bad taste in my mouth... It was a very very first compulsory class that we all, the freshmen of the faculty, had to take--whether we like it or not.

The class was split into 2 big sections and we had to study with 2 different professors. (If you graduated from this faculty before 2010, you will know why I chose the word "different" in this article... lol) We were required to read a book that is written in Thai (by one of the professors) for the first section and we had a kind-of course reader for the second section, which is written in English--but interpreted in Thai when the prof was teaching. I was very curious if the prof was spontaneously translating it just at the moment he was teaching us, or he had a written scripts hidden under his lecture table... I had not tried to prove what he was doing anyway. Rather, I decided to translate the whole d*m* reader and give it to all my classmates, plus one hard copy and one electronic copy to my professor, which I didn't go after and find what he did with those.

I didn't get a very impressive grade out of that class, mostly because I didn't understand most of the first section of the class. I found that--and I still believe so today--Thai academics have found a very confusing way to translate, and/or write textbooks/class materials. I am not sure whether it is because they want to sound smart, or they simply think that their students will be able to approach the "true knowledge" of the subjects, not just a "model" or "make-believe stuffs."

To be a student in Thailand, you need to bare with that.

Therefore, I can really say, as a lecturer, that I have no idea what I should do if I have to teach this fundamental class! Since it is a basis of the field, I might end up making my students' lives very miserable if my teaching sucks...

Consequently, I spent a whole day to find a very student-friendly book for my class at the Chulalongkorn University's central library, and, lucky enough, I found this book--Politics: an Introduction, written by Barrie Axford and his collegues at Oxford Brookes university. I was very happy then I remembered that both my professors who taught me this class graduated from England...

Uh..oh.. "Should I get a class material written by a Brit then?" I talked to myself.

Anyway, I decided to open the book and read it and, more importantly, I found it very interesting and very user-friendly as well. I will tell you more about this book next time.

Thank you for reading,

Surada