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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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