Education and Cosmopolitanism: A Counterargument of Martha Nussbaum's Assertion that U.S. Students Need an Education Based in Cosmopolitan Ideology.

Martha Nussbaum writes in her essay, Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism, "Our nation is appallingly ignorant of the rest of the world" (11). I agree. And I agree also that students should be taught more about the world beyond their borders. The question that remains isn't what but how. Nussbaum believes that a cosmopolitan education, in which students are taught that they are, above all, "citizens of the world," will help produce the kind of adults that will see the commonality in other human beings, and will stress to make them "more like our city-dweller" (9). 

Yet, I have issues as to how such an education might be taught and its social impact on students. As laudable as Nussbaum's goal is, integrating a cosmopolitan education in any meaningful way collides with the realities of a time- and cash-strapped public educational system. Even if the integration of cosmopolianism in schools was possible, I see nothing in it that will prevent it from having the same ramifications as a patriotic or nationalistic one. 

Since Nussbaum believes that students should be taught about other countries, "their histories, problems, and comparative successes," (6) a fundamental change in curricula would be needed, a fact to which Nussbaum readily accedes. It would require a change in the text books which are taught in class, as well as a change in the subjects discussed. As Nussbaum writes, students ought to be taught not only about the rest of the world, but "the problems of hunger and pollution...and the implications of these problems for the larger issues of global hunger and global ecology."