(Page 9 of 10) - Culminating Experience: Writing the Political Autobiography authored by Tannenbaum, Aron.

Creating and teaching a political autobiography-writing course has its pitfalls, too. One pitfall is
grading: One must be lenient in grading any kind of autobiographical assignment. One does not,
after all, want to tell a student that he or she has had a "B minus life." Thus, half the course grade
consists of quizzes on the Cochran book's chapters, reducing the autobiography to less than
overwhelming influence on the final grade. The value of the autobiographical assignment lies in
the doing of it as much as in the conclusions that each student reaches about his or her political
self. Students who are fortunate in having family members willing and able to talk about their
political experiences have an advantage over those whose family members are more reticent. For
those students who, for one reason or another have difficulty obtaining interview information
from parents and grandparents, an autobiography that demonstrates some knowledge of the main
trends in Southern and national politics and some connection with their own lives can also receive
a decent grade.

A second pitfall is student privacy. Why, students ask, should they have to write for academic
credit something as personal as an autobiography? One must be very cautious about engaging
students about their personal affairs. I ask students not to write about such material unless it has a
very clear connection to the political. Abortion crosses that border, though, and it does appear on
some political autobiographies because it politicizes some otherwise apolitical students.

A third pitfall is the constraint of time. Writing an autobiography is not an easy task for anyone,
let alone an undergraduate student. A one-hour course does not provide as much time as might be
desired for instruction in interviewing techniques, let alone autobiographical writing. If one
believes that “the best is the enemy of the good” then perhaps this capstone course would not be
one’s first choice for a culminating experience. But if one believes that a liberal arts education
should include a strong dose of self-knowledge, then perhaps this course has some merit.

But one final advantage of this kind of course is precisely that it does compel students to engage
with the political sides of their lives. Given a student generation obsessed with non-political
affairs, a political scientist ought to feel some gratification in having students at least begin
systematically to link the personal to the political.