(foto David Dickson)

måndag 3 januari 2011

EDUCATION: Roots of Stanley Fish's "classical turn" III

Third in line of the sources for the article where Stanley Fish advocates a return to classical education is the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum. Nussbaum is one of the world's best-renowned present-day philosophers (see Wikipedia on Martha Nussbum).

Nussbaum's recent book Not for Profit: Why Democracy needs the Humanities argues that ”education for profit has displaced education for citizenship” and emphasizes ”the importance of critical pedagogy for the development of individual responsibility, innovation, and self-examination.” She ”analyses the role of the arts and humanities” and emphasizes their importance in all education (Amazon.com Editorial Reviews).

Her Commencement address for Colgate University's 189th commencement, May 16, 2010, is a concentration of her educational aims. Here Nussbaum warns of the future results of today’s downsizing of humanistic education in schools world-wide: ”Nations of technically trained people who don't know how to criticize authority, useful profit-makers with obtuse imaginations.”

In the bilingual magazine for reflexion on art and culture, Literal: Latin American Voices Nussbaum develops her thoughts on democracy and the liberal arts.

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