"Even if our sole concern were national economic growth, we would have to protect humanistic education." This is stated by the American philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum (New York, 1947), according to whom, in schools and universities worldwide, the exact opposite is happening: the humanities (literature, history, philosophy, etc.), as well as the arts, are increasingly scorned, if not directly eliminated. What is happening to us? Nussbaum is in no way against hard sciences or technological knowledge. But she warns against the error of despising humanistic knowledge and the critical thinking associated with it. And she warns that, at the same time as the curriculum is being stripped of humanistic elements, the pedagogy of memorization is being reimposed (obviously, this does not mean she rejects all memorization).