For Nussbaum, Socrates is the exemplar of the spirit of critical thinking. As a result, she advocates Socratic pedagogy and the importance of learning how to examine arguments and to argue well.
Because I devoted the better part of my teaching career to teaching students how to write argumentative essays, I agree with her that argumentation is important in a democracy. But it is not easy to teach.
Moreover, I have no problem with her use of Socrates as an exemplar. However, he was found guilty of trumped-up charges and executed under the restored democracy in ancient Athens. But she does not discuss this inconvenient fact. I wish she had. As this tragic example shows, arguing well does not always produce benign results.
Nevertheless, she argues that critical thinking and voicing critical thought can at times lead to benign results, as I am sure it can.
Oftentimes, short-sighted decisions could have been avoided by more rigorous argument about possible alternatives and possible objections. Moreover, it strikes me that this point about rigorous argument would apply not just to legislative decision-making and decision-making in courts of law, but to all forms of decision-making, including business decisions.
So here's my first question for President Obama: Is the career education that you praise going to teach students how to examine arguments and how to argue well? If it does not, it will not be preparing them for decision making in their careers.
As to the goal of cultivating understanding of others, this is necessary in a democracy so that we learn to curb our tendency to consider others as means, not as ends in themselves to be respected as much as we respect ourselves.
In the course of my teaching career, I taught the novels THINGS FALL APART (1958) and NO LONGER ATE EASE (1960) by the Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe more often than I taught any other works of literature of comparable length in an effort to help my diverse American students understand very different from American culture and people they knew. As a result of my own teaching efforts, I can endorse Nussbaum's goal for education as helping students to understand people and cultures that are quite different from their own experiences.
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