In 1914, John Alexander Smith, Professor of Moral Philosophy
at Oxford,
addressed the first session of his two-year lecture
course as follows:
“Gentlemen, you are now about to embark on a course of studies that (will) form a noble adventure…Let me make this clear to you. ..nothing that you will learn in the course of your studies will be of the slightest possible use to you in after life – save only this – that if you work hard and intelligently, you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot, and that, in my view, is the main, if not the sole purpose of education.”
That quote reminds me of the famous Joan
Robinson line:
“The purpose of studying economics is not to
acquire
a set of ready-made answers to economic questions,
but to learn
how to avoid being deceived by economists.”
