{"id":1360,"date":"2006-10-19T09:17:50","date_gmt":"2006-10-19T07:17:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/19\/teaching-humanity\/"},"modified":"2007-10-19T13:58:52","modified_gmt":"2007-10-19T11:58:52","slug":"teaching-humanity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/19\/teaching-humanity\/","title":{"rendered":"Teaching Humanity"},"content":{"rendered":"

My wife handed me this article<\/a> by Martha Nussbaum in the newsweek<\/em> a while back, and it’s been sitting on my desk waiting to be read since then. I went for a walk with my daughter swinging in her sling across my chest this morning, reading it as I sang her to sleep, and was enthralled by its simplicity and clarity on that which seems so ingrained in me, misunderstood and underused by education systems and mass media world wide. If you don’t have time to read the whole article<\/a>, I ask you to read the following (last) paragraph TWICE. Once, as is – accenting the importance of liberal arts education – and a second time, replacing the word “education” with “news media” – for shits and giggles…<\/p>\n

Democracies have great rational and imaginative powers. Yet they also are prone to irrationality, parochialism, haste, sloppiness and selfishness. Education based mainly on profitability in the global market magnifies these deficiencies–to the point that they threaten the very life of democracy itself. We need to favor an education that cultivates the critical capacities, that fosters a complex understanding of the world and its peoples and that educates and refines the capacity for sympathy. In short, an education that cultivates human beings rather than producing useful machines. If we do not insist on the crucial importance of the humanities and the arts, they will drop away. They don’t make money. But they do something far more precious: they make a world worth living in.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My wife handed me this article by Martha Nussbaum in the newsweek a while back, and it’s been sitting on my desk waiting to be read since then. I went for a walk with my daughter swinging in her sling across my chest this morning, reading it as I sang her to sleep, and was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,9,8,19,12,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-politics","category-pop-culture","category-re-blog-tidbits","category-stimulus","category-theory","category-uncategorical"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9blZT-lW","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1241,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2006\/06\/26\/by-judy-breck-in-the-education-commons\/","url_meta":{"origin":1360,"position":0},"title":"by Judy Breck | in The Education Commons","author":"nathaniel","date":"26 June 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"re-blog from iSummit 2006 <<>> Shown in the picture here is the lovely daughter of iSummit Artist in Residence Nathaniel Stern, four-week-old South African Sidonie.\u00a0\u00a0 Her generation will the first to experience fully 21st century education. The Sunday morning Education Commons panel looked at what Sidonie and her contemporaries should\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "creative commons"","block_context":{"text":"creative commons","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/old-categories\/creative-commons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":514,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2004\/12\/03\/my-humblest-apologies\/","url_meta":{"origin":1360,"position":1},"title":"art pick at JAG; tomorrow at noon!","author":"nathaniel","date":"03 December 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, dear readers; my humblest apologies for the inaction on this blog as of late - at some point, I just needed to slow down a bit. I know it sounds lame, but my wife actually took our digital camera with her to an academic conference all this week, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "art"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1587,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2008\/02\/09\/obama-vs-the-phobocracy\/","url_meta":{"origin":1360,"position":2},"title":"Obama vs. the Phobocracy","author":"nathaniel","date":"09 February 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\"... in the name of preserving hope do we disdain it. That is how a phobocracy maintains its grip on power.\" This is a moving and wonderful article that every American should read before they go to the polls. Chabon, who wrote one of my favorite books of all time,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "news and politics"","block_context":{"text":"news and politics","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/news-and-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1720,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2008\/12\/08\/jessica-meuninck-ganger\/","url_meta":{"origin":1360,"position":3},"title":"Jessica Meuninck-Ganger","author":"nathaniel","date":"08 December 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"So I've been in Milwaukee for three months now, nearly four, and things are finally starting to settle. My first semester of classes is over, I'm finishing up my dissertation, am all unpacked, and even have a one-night show with one of my art classes opening this Friday (more on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "art"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/category\/art\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/meuninck_insimage-300x223.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":406,"url":"https:\/\/nathanielstern.com\/blog\/2004\/08\/18\/new-media-in-the-new-south-africa\/","url_meta":{"origin":1360,"position":4},"title":"new media in the new south africa","author":"nathaniel","date":"18 August 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Yes, I know I said it'd be a few days until my next post, but it actually calms me to blog. 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