In today’s Pope Center piece, Jerome Foss, who teaches political science at St. Vincent College in Pennsylvania, explains the benefits of assigning students original works as opposed to textbook readings. Textbooks tend to be dull, watered-down, and written so as not to require much effort on the part of students. It’s much better to challenge students with, e.g., several of the Federalist papers than to have them read about them in a textbook.