Democratic education is on the ropes. In many countries throughout the world, the “demands of the global market have made everyone focus on scientific and technical proficiencies as the key abilities, and the humanities and the arts are increasingly perceived as useless frills that we can prune away to make sure our nation remains competitive.” While an emphasis on science and technology has grown national GDPs around the globe, the imaginative and critical abilities that lie at the core of the arts and humanities are being left behind.

Democracy needs the arts and humanities—they are how we teach kids to empathize with people from different races, classes, genders, religions, and cultures. Learning the music from a different culture is a great way for young people to explore that culture in a curious and non-threatening way. Reading the poetry of someone from a lower socio-economic class helps children understand the difficulties of those who are less fortunate. Why is this important? Because these people are our neighbors and coworkers, and as the world has become an increasingly intermixed place, a global melting pot, the ability to understand where other people come from is paramount for our coexistence with them.

As an alternative to the “growth-based model,” which raises children to be autonomous cogs in the profit-driven machine we call an economy, Nussbaum advocates for what she calls the “Human Development paradigm.” According to this model, the most important element in a proper education is developing smart citizens capable of existing in a democracy, “a form of government in which the people inform themselves about crucial issues they will address as voters and, sometimes, as elected or appointed officials.”

One of the reasons educators in the United States have insisted that undergraduates at liberal arts universities take courses in philosophy and the humanities is that “they believe such courses, through both content and pedagogy, will stimulate students to think and argue for themselves, rather than defer to tradition and authority.” They believe that the ability to argue in this Socratic way is, as Socrates proclaimed, valuable for democracy. The Socratic method of asking questions and respectfully debating with those whose ideas differ from your own is the key to developing critical thinking. Critical thinking, in turn, is one of the most important skills necessary for the citizens of a democracy. ‘Teaching to the test,’ which increasingly dominates public school classrooms, produces an atmosphere of student passivity and teacher routinization. The creativity and individuality that mark the best humanistic teaching and learning has a hard time finding room to unfold. Learning math, while important, does not typically foster open-ended critical debate as the answers to problems are mostly fixed and predetermined. It is most often through the clash of ideas, presented to students via classes in philosophy and the humanities, that independent thinkers are created. These are the kinds of people we need in order to sustain a healthy democracy.

Despite the reality that democracies around the world are suffering, as our social-media driven bifurcated political landscapes continue to grow, as governments continue to measure progress by economic output, we are seeing a decline in democratically-necessary educational values. In Britain, for example, “humanities departments are required to justify themselves to the government, which funds all academic institutions, by showing how their research and teaching contribute to economic profitability.” If they are unable to show this, government funding for the school can drop and in some cases disappear entirely. This, sadly, has led to a decline in the number of philosophy and humanities classes offered to students, in preference to those that maximize economic output. The truth is that businesses need employees with the capacity to imagine, for innovation requires minds that are flexible, open and creative. It is literature and the arts that cultivate these skills.

“A mixed liberal arts education recognizes that higher education prepares students in two distinct ways,” Nussbaum writes, “for a career, but also for citizenship and life.” I believe her assessment of the current educational situation in the world to be mostly true, and while it is important to prepare young people for a career, it is paramount that we don’t neglect the importance of educating them for citizenship. Luckily, we in the United States have a tradition of liberal arts education and while it is in decline, it is not dead yet. Sadly, the same cannot be said of many places in the rest of the world. Her writing is a call to all of us to continue valuing the arts, humanities, philosophy, and the spirit of debate inspired by Socrates himself. If we don’t, we risk our very democracy.