Again, I have no proof, just a vague recollection of a Matthew Yglesias post and my own sensibility, which may or may not be worth much. On the Federalist, this was never really drilled much into us, actually. I went to public schools, though. Heh. Here's how it went, according to my spotty memory: Pre-HS: Some American history, the Pilgrims, the Revolution, the Civil War, etc. Not much in the way of political theory. Mostly worthless and usually the same sort of stuff every year. 9th: Civics focused on civil liberties-related SC cases (my teacher sort of threw out the book and just taught mostly 1st Amendment stuff) 10th: World History, next to nothing worth remembering. Terrible teacher. Events oriented 11th: US History, pretty good class, but again, events-oriented. A vague overview of a few of the Federalist papers, the debates w/ the anti-Federalists, and so forth. Too much to cover to dwell on much. Not theme-oriented like a college class might be. 12th: European History, with a focus on wars, religious movements and some grounding in European philosophy. Quite a good class, actually, but so much material in such a short time. So that's about it. Not much drilling of anything. I probably learned more from studying for the two Government AP tests than anything else. To my great regret I skipped out on the political theory in college, except for that self-directed democracy seminar with Beinart & guests (e.g. Gaddis, Stan Greenberg) that I mentioned before. Hmm. Maybe Allan Bloom was right after all.