----------------- HES POSTING ----------------- 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 ------------ FOOTER TO HES POSTING ------------ For information, send the message "info HES" to [log in to unmask]