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I agree with Anthony Waterman's views and think that it needs a full course 
to get something out of a text like WN (which is my favourite, since it 
allows to discuss almost any issue, both historical and contemporary). 
 
Though my experience is unusual, since I have to teach philosophy students, 
who are used to read classics, I adopted the same approach with economics 
students, and it worked. 
 
They were helped by an introduction to WN, which I published in Italian (in 
a series of introductory volumes to 'philosophical masterpieces', which is 
not a bad perspective from which to look at Smith, or, for that matter, 
Montesquieu or any other classical social thinker). 
 
All great economists can be taught in a similar way, depending on the 
teacher-classroom combination. Of course one must renounce to judge the 
results by the standards of a textbook based course. There will be flaws in 
the knowledge acquired by students, but their minds will be open to 
discussion, criticism and doubt and this is the main task of our 
discipline, especially when taught in economics faculties I would like to 
add. 
 
Tiziano Raffaelli 
 
 
 
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