Let me start with that final defect and work backwards. Nussbaum argues that the humanities are victims of a narrowly vocational approach to education that, in searching for economic growth, neglects the full development of human capacities. She insists that the attributes of liberal education – flexibility, independent judgement and imagination – are in fact good for business. This claim is often advanced on behalf of an Arts degree, though it usually depends on unexamined assumptions about the nature of alternative university courses: can we be sure a degree in Law or Architecture does not form these capacities?

Rather than pursue this incidental benefit, Nussbaum prefers to advance a different role for the humanities: their service of democracy. They provide us with the ability to understand ourselves and connect with others, to transcend local loyalties and appreciate cultural difference, to accept our obligations and to bridge inequality: in short, to be active and responsible citizens. These claims rest partly on a psychological model of childhood development and partly on Nussbaum’s enthusiastic snapshots of progressive experiments in curriculum and pedagogy. Yet even if we accept her account of socialisation and applaud such innovatory projects, they scarcely encompass the analytical, critical and speculative disciplines that comprise the humanities. Nor is a better citizenship the reason why we practise them. Nussbaum has merely replaced one instrumental justification with another.

‘This is a manifesto, not an empirical study’, she declares, and accordingly her book is content to illustrate the propositions on which it depends. What is the evidence for the betrayal of the humanities? A group of scholars who met in 2004 to discuss the educational philosophy of Tagore agreed that, even in his own country of India, the master’s ideas were neglected and even scorned by ‘bureaucratic obtuseness and uncritical group-think’. A 2005 retreat of teachers in the Chicago school where Dewey conducted his path-breaking experiments in democratic education expressed anxiety that the parents of their students wanted testable outcomes. A dean of education told her that the university president was only interested in science and technology. Nussbaum states that ‘there are hundreds of stories like these’. No doubt there are, but they hardly provide robust evidence of secular change.

How does she explain this heedless discard of the skills needed to keep democracy alive? There is reference to a ‘time of economic hardship’, but the examples cited above precede the financial crisis and the contraction of the advanced economies. Our present neglect is seen as a consequence of the hunger for profits – though that is not a recent development – and of educational cost-cutting, but she provides no statistics to support this proposition. Nussbaum claims that governments pursuing economic growth are content to train an élite and allow others to get by with no more than an elementary education, a statement that is belied by OECD data and contradicted by the policy documents of governments aspiring to prosper in the information economy. She thinks that this liberal arts model has held up better in the United States, but her grasp of higher education in other countries is weak: she fails to acknowledge their distinct traditions, organisation and funding systems. She seems to think that small-group teaching, like ‘Western Civ’, is a form of American exceptionalism.

There are indeed forces working on our universities that disadvantage the humanities. They arise from the reformulation of education from a public good to an investment in human capital, in which government outlays are replaced by charges to users: public expenditure on higher education in Australia as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product peaked thirty years ago. The shift was made possible by the invention of deferred fees, thereby establishing price signals that stimulated market behaviour, and by methods of funding that relegated the humanities to pauper status. The recent Review of Australian Higher Education, chaired by Denise Bradley, drew attention to the damaging effects of our present arrangements: it was constricting access, straining standards, distorting provision. But the Bradley review left to one side the relative funding model that is so ruinous to the humanities. When confronted with their vandalism, vice-chancellors around the country lament their impotence to resist market forces.

Nussbaum’s prescription for their revival does not engage with such considerations. Hers is a more prescriptive remedy. In the formative years, she clings to the precepts of Rousseau, Dewey, and Tagore. Young minds have to be weaned from the perils of narcissism, shame, disgust and contempt in order to acquire judgement and compassion. At school they will dance, act, play and extend their imagination through literature, all of this requiring a careful supervision ‘to address particular cultural blind spots’ and ensure they are not exposed to ‘defective forms of “literature”’. They will also learn history, geography, economics, politics and law, all interacting with each other in order to confront the practical problems of the present – we know this in Australia as Studies of Society and the Environment, or SOSE, and it is a mistake. Disciplines are not simply bodies of learning that need to be brought to bear on contemporary issues. Nor are they artificial barriers to a holistic education. On the contrary, they are powerfully durable ways of thinking and understanding. A lazy metaphor describes them as silos that need to be demolished, but silos are public utilities that protect a precious resource.

In tertiary education, Nussbaum allows that the humanities can be pursued through disciplinary subjects in greater depth, providing that they are bridged with general studies and accompanied by courses in religion and philosophy. This sounds ominously like the ‘new generation’ Arts course in the Melbourne model, except that its disciplinary options are attenuated and its breadth subjects are hollow artifices. But what if the undergraduate wishes to pursue a specialised course, say logic and linguistics, or American history and literature? Nussbaum would say that they need to be held to the duties of responsible citizenship; the University of Melbourne tells them that they have to make do with what is left. Which of them is the greater philistine?