United States Civics

POLS 701 - Introduction to American Civics

Course Overview

On December 12, 2009, Houston held a Municipal Run-off election. It was a Run-off in an off year, so people discredited its validity. 16% of Houston's registered voters showed up to the polls. It was historic, however. A woman named Annise Parker was elected mayor and became the first openly gay person elected Mayor of a major (over one million people) U.S. City. This shows that many elections are important, if not all. My hope is that by the end of this course, all who take it will be persuaded to never sit out on an election.

Going back to my point about Houston, imagine you are a Man or Woman who lives in Houston, besides the Mayor, you have about 113 other elected officials. My other hope is that the reason you vote is because you actually know about the offices and not just want to pull the lever for blue or red.

Syllabus

National Executive

This basically means the President, the Vice-President, and the Cabinet. We will go over this briefly because it seems to be the only thing taught in High School Civics.

National Legislature

Is Pro is the opposite of Con, than what is the opposite of Progress? We will spend about a week on Congress to show the nuts and bolts on how it works.

National Judicial

All the Federal Courts, not just the Supreme Court. Please note that this is just the workings of the institutions themselves, not of famous cases by them. We will go over the Federal Courts for a couple days.

State Executive

The Governors. I will attempt to make a State Neutral version.

State Legislatures

Since every state is different, I will try to make it neutral. Like congress I want to spend a week on it.

Counties

Since every County is different, I will do ONE day on basic County responsibilities.

Local Government

We will go over; Home Rule and General Law, Mayor-Council and Council-Manager, and many more. You can expect about 2 week on this subject.

Local and State Judicial

Every State is different so I am going to do it this way. I will ask all of my students to name the state they are from, and do one day on Local Judicial of each state that is mentioned.

Constitutional Law

Going over the Bill of Rights (Specifically the 1st Amendment). This will take about a week.

Course Times and Sign Up

There will be no Tests, there will be no grades. I just want to make this class to educate Voters in America. The Course will start Monday December 21st, and end February 26th. We will have December 25th off. January 1st off. January 11th-15th off. January 18th off. February 15th off. Please sign up on my User Talk Page Here before the 21st. I will keep in touch. Jimwitz 03:51, 15 December 2009 (UTC)

Assignments

Assignments are posted Here