Driving Plato’s Chariot: Lessons on Student Ethical Development (Introduction)
This book is scheduled for publication in early summer 2024. The Introduction appears below — followed by author biographies. Footnotes will be included in the original text. Reviews of the book can be seen at this link.
From Plato’s Phaedrus (the vase image interpreted)
Of the nature of the soul let me speak briefly, and in a figure. And let the figure be composite — a pair of winged horses and a charioteer. Now the winged horses and the charioteers of the gods are all of them noble . . . but the human charioteer drives his in a pair; and one of them is noble and the other is ignoble; and the driving of them of necessity gives a great deal of trouble to him.
BOOK CONTENTS
Introduction (below)
Chapter One: “The Power of Stories”
Chapter Two: “Gratitude”
Chapter Three: “Know Thyself: Self-insight and Self-management”
Chapter Four: “Trust”
Chapter Five: “Truth-telling and Professional Responsibility”
Chapter Six: “Joyfulness, Purpose, and Fulfillment”
Authors (last page below)
INTRODUCTION
How would you design a required course on academic integrity for thousands of college students who didn’t want to take it? If the course turned out to be measurably successful, what insights could be shared with other educators?
The four authors of this book — accomplished professionals in applied ethics, public health, economics, and law — focus on those two questions. What we’ve learned goes beyond issues related to academic integrity and encompasses a broad range of ethical development programming at schools and colleges.
Over 45,000 students have completed the Academic Integrity Seminar (AIS) and related programs. Referring schools include a mix of leading public and private institutions nationwide. Student success in AIS has been demonstrated by survey results included in the Appendix (see the “AIS Performance Report”) and by hundreds of pages of student comments like this one:
I just want to say, wow, this seminar was nothing like I expected. At first, I thought this seminar would be like punishment and busy work, but as soon as I started it, I realized that it was much more. The assignments were thought provoking and inspirational and I could feel myself wanting to try and become someone people can look up to . . . This whole little journey actually really opened my eyes more about who I want to be, how I want to approach it, and how I want to thank the people in my life. Thank you so much for the comments and everything!
What this student learned — and how that learning was designed and communicated — is the focus of our book.
AIS provides basic instruction on how academic dishonesty is defined, but our primary goal has been helping students understand why academic integrity is important. The latter task necessarily entails deep engagement with applied ethics and purposeful learning, including topics identified in our chapter titles: Gratitude; Know Thyself; Trust; Truth-telling and Professional Responsibility; and Joyfulness, Purpose, and Fulfillment. Our opening chapter on The Power of Stories explains our pedagogy pertaining to all of those topics.
Self-discovery and the Chariot Metaphor
Applied ethics and purposeful learning can’t be taught by precept. A journey in self-discovery is required. The best that can be achieved in any such effort was described by microbiologist Rene Dubos (also featured in Chapter One):
Every perceptive adult knows he is part beast and part saint, a mixture of folly and reason, love and hate, courage and cowardice. He can be at the same time believer and doubter, idealist and skeptic, altruistic citizen and selfish hedonist. The coexistence of these conflicting traits naturally causes tension but it is nonetheless compatible with sanity. In a mysterious way, the search for identity and the pursuit of self-selected goals harmonize opposites and facilitate the integration of discordant human traits into some kind of working accord.
Dubos’s description of the need to manage “conflicting traits’’ in the human psyche explains why Plato’s chariot allegory (visualized on the cover) is an important theme throughout this book. The allegory depicts a charioteer (representing higher levels of reason and understanding) who must control two horses — one with an orientation toward moral goodness and the other driven by selfish desires.
Nature has two voices, the one is high, the other low; one is in sweet accord with reason and justice, and the other apparently at war with both.
— Frederick Douglass
Defining an admirable life
AIS students aren’t encouraged to pursue the fruitless endeavor of finding and maintaining a perfect balance in life. Instead, we introduce them to thought experiments, psychological insights, philosophical perspectives, and “lives of integrity” — including Charles Darwin, Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and Nelson Mandela — so they might identify better ways to create a “working accord” that brings them closer to an admirable life. An admirable life, we suggest, is distinguished by the failures it overcomes; the courage and resilience it exemplifies; the responsibility it assumes; the compassion it displays; the wisdom it develops; the trust it inspires; and the beauty it creates.
I believe this Academic Integrity Seminar should be incorporated into every university’s pre-freshman coursework the summer prior. The lessons learned from the various readings are immense. It allows the individual to self-reflect on the choices they have made in the past and what choices they will make in the future. I would hope everyone who has the opportunity to take the Seminar keeps an open mind because they will garner so much wisdom which can be incorporated into their lives for years to come.
— AIS student comment
Many AIS readings and assignments are drawn from the humanities. We also introduce students to thinkers in interdisciplinary fields who build conceptual bridges between disciplines, including Martha Nussbaum, Richard Feynman, Carol S. Dweck, Charles Darwin, Robert Sapolsky, Antonio Damasio, Jonathan Haidt, and E.O. Wilson.
Students will discover, for example, that Charles Darwin was a preeminent biologist, a leading thinker on applied ethics, and an advocate of the methodology of science — all while struggling with lifelong challenges to his physical and mental health (see the Chapter Six subtitle and related text: “Charles Darwin: a study on resilience, adaptation, and purpose”).
Exploring foundational topics in multiple fields
Declining enrollments in the humanities should motivate educators in every discipline to devote more time to exploring foundational topics in their fields. What do they find important, fascinating, inspiring, and beautiful about what they teach?
Here are several examples of “foundational topics” in science, engineering, and business included in the Academic Integrity Seminar:
Johannes Kepler asked the elusive question: “Why are things as they are and not otherwise?”
What does Kepler’s inquiry suggest about the importance of using imagination and reason to “get to the bottom of things” in any subject?
E.O. Wilson (Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and a winner of the National Medal of Science) wrote that “the most successful scientist thinks like a poet — wide-ranging, sometimes fantastical — and works like a bookkeeper.”
How can students cultivate and balance those two qualities in themselves?
Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, and Charles Darwin wrote evocatively about insights drawn from the sciences:
Einstein: “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science”
Feynman: “imagination reaches out repeatedly trying to achieve some higher level of understanding, until suddenly I find myself momentarily alone before one new corner of nature’s pattern of beauty and true majesty revealed.
Darwin “Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows . . . [W]hilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
Some of the greatest scientists in history have used words like “imagination,” “beautiful,” “mysterious,” and “wonderful” to describe their work. Does teaching and learning on college campuses encompass that vocabulary? If not, why not?
The Wright brothers are two of the greatest engineers in American history. They developed a style of self-correcting argumentation summarized by Wilbur Wright:
No truth is without some mixture of error, and no error so false that it possesses no element of truth . . . Honest argument is merely a process of mutually picking the beams and motes out of each other’s eyes so both can see clearly.
What does Wright’s observation reveal about the importance of truth-seeking and truth-telling in any discipline?
Ralph Gomory (a research professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and a winner of the National Medal of Science) wrote that:
Evolution has produced two sides of human nature: the more self-centered and the more altruistic. Different training and circumstances can bring out in us more of one or the other, but they are both in our DNA.
How often and at what depth is human nature explored in schools of business or other academic fields nationwide?
Students narrowly focused on career preparation won’t be pondering the questions suggested above. Nor will they be deeply engaged in learning as an end in itself (probably the best antidote to academic dishonesty). Our Seminar is too brief an exercise to provide a comprehensive alternative, but we can be an impetus for change. So, to create a more enduring impact, we urge students to pursue campus-based options, including identifying faculty mentors and asking them questions like “What aspects of your field do you find most interesting?” and “What mysteries do you explore?”
Learning from the Stanford “What Matters to Me and Why” forums
Our efforts to form a partnership with colleagues at referring institutions works both ways. Stanford students, for example, may be surprised to discover that some of the topics we examine with them were inspired by the “What Matters to Me and Why” forums on their campus. In that context, our role is to help reiterate insights and interventions other educators have taught us.
Old bureaucrat, my comrade, it is not you who are to blame. No one ever helped you to escape . . . You have chosen not to be perturbed by great problems, having trouble enough to forget your own fate as man. You are not a dweller upon an errant planet and do not ask yourself questions to which there are no answers . . . Nobody grasped you by the shoulder while there was still time. Now the clay of which you were shaped has dried and hardened, and naught in you will ever awaken the sleeping musician, the poet, the astronomer that possibly inhabited you in the beginning.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
We’ve been surprised how many students tell us they are rarely asked to read, analyze, and express an informed opinion about historical, philosophical, or imaginative literature. How can we expect them to define a sense of purpose without that opportunity? Many may be well-prepared to begin their careers, but few will have thought deeply about what makes a career meaningful.
AIS Tutors frequently invite students to undertake an unusual thought experiment, reiterated below. This is our effort to help students visualize career choices most likely to contribute to longer term flourishing:
AIS sample exercise:
Please take a tour through a local graveyard and see how many gravestone inscriptions you can find like this:
“John will be long remembered and admired for developing a clever financial product that duped thousands of old people out of their life savings.”
Why don’t we find more candid gravestones like John’s? His financial product may not have been illegal — at least initially. And he can’t go to jail because he’s dead. If human connection and trust are irrelevant (i.e., only money and power are perceived to count), why should people like John hesitate to proclaim their financial “cleverness” for all to see?
Bottom line: human beings are highly cooperative social animals. We want to be remembered for the lives we’ve improved, the trust we’ve built, and the beauty we’ve created (our social instincts), not what we consumed or destroyed (our selfish instincts).
Encouraging student writing and “thoughtful introspection”
AIS assignments necessarily go beyond reading to encompass writing. We understand the temptations associated with generative AI and seek to develop assignments students find inherently engaging and worthwhile. Most students understand, for example, that generative AI can write an embarrassingly clichéd “gratitude statement,” but can’t feel or convincingly express individualized experiences that inspire love and admiration for particular individuals. AI deficiencies in this regard (among others) are demonstrated to students when we ask them to include and analyze pertinent ChatGPT responses in selected AIS assignments (see an example in the AIS Performance Report, Appendix I).
AIS students are also urged to consider the immediate personal benefit of doing their own thinking and writing. Here’s a pertinent observation from an AIS tutor to a UT-Austin student:
Our reflective writing exercises might be a model for what you can do on your own. Try writing in a personal journal every day for a week or so and see how it makes you feel. Do you gain added insight into yourself and others? Do you see previously missed connections between different ideas or events? Does your mind feel more focused and in flow? We’ve been influenced by the related work of James Pennebaker, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Texas. Please see his UT web page: Click the link: “Writing and Health.” Also, here’s a related example from the January 16, 2017 New York Times about how President Obama used daily reflective writing when he was a young man.
Most of the writing exercises we assign require thoughtful introspection. In one assignment, students are asked to follow the style of Stoic philosopher and Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius when he wrote private thoughts of admiration about friends, teachers, and family members. We remind them that Marcus’s effort was a “written meditation” designed to remember role models in the past and to habituate thoughts about worthy people and beautiful characteristics in the present. The latter perspective reflects Marcus’s view (consistent with aspects of contemporary Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) that: “[t]he things you think about determine the quality of your mind. Your soul takes on the color of your thoughts.”
The most valuable reading for me was Book I of Meditations by Marcus Arelius. I liked this excerpt so much that I read the next five books. The first book, especially, gave me a perspective of the traits that we typically value most in family and friends. Marcus doesn’t express gratitude for people being interesting to him, but for having strong principles and good natures. This reading made me realize that the people in our lives who show inner peace and kindness towards others are the ones with the greatest impact on us.
— AIS student Comment
One of our co-authors has written a book about college student suicide featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Referenced in that book is a case study in which a student left notes revealing patterns of thinking before he died. It’s painful to read instances when the student tapped into the “executive function” of his mind and — like an auto ignition struggling, but failing to start — almost achieved better self-insight. He wrote, for example: “[w]ill I ever cure stuttering? Job interviews, phone calls. People notice or am I blowing this out of proportion?” Family and friends subsequently reported he was indeed “blowing this out of proportion.”
Mark Edmundson (author of The Age of Guilt: The Super-Ego in the Online World), wrote in this regard:
Freud believed that when we turn mute inner experience into words, we begin to make progress. There’s something about expression that liberates. We can calm down and move with circumspection.
Teachers are not substitutes for professional therapists. We can, however, help troubled students become sufficiently self-aware that they’re motivated to seek help when they need it. This prospect is reiterated in the following observation shared with students by AIS tutors: “Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln sought help for what they recognized could be debilitating mood disorders; that help — even more readily available now from mental health professionals — enabled them to find a sense of purpose that defined them and enriched the world.”
When an educator asks a young person to think about developing a direction, it may cause confusion, even anxiety. But it is extremely healthy for the young person to be faced with these kinds of issues . . . One of the endless sources of pain for me when I talk with young people who are struggling with their lives is the central theme of meaninglessness . . . they are absent in terms of values, thinking, and direction.
— From an interview by Gary Pavela with Samuel C. Klagsbrun, M.D., Professor, Department of Psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine
Lessons from the Harvard “Grant Study” on human flourishing
AIS tutors make frequent reference to core lessons learned in the Harvard University “Grant Study” of adult development. An overview by long-time study Director George E. Vaillant, M.D. was summarized in a 2001 Harvard Magazine article:
[A]lthough it is not easy to change our defenses by ourselves, chance favors a prepared mind: ‘We can start by admiring how other skillful people cope. Then ponder, when things go badly for us, how we might have used self-defeating mechanisms’. Lastly, [Vaillant] says, ‘consider this rule of thumb: Don’t try to think less of yourself, but try to think of yourself less’” [emphasis added].
Overall, we’re likely to think of ourselves less when we’re expressing gratitude, deeply engaged in learning and exploring, experiencing awe and beauty, emulating “lives of integrity,” expanding our capacity for trust, and devoting ourselves to a compassionate cause greater than ourselves.
A concluding example and summary
We’ll end this introduction the way we end many of our tutor comments — with Albert Camus’s powerful example of human flourishing in his novel The Plague. A character in the novel named “Dr. Rieux” had been fighting a relentless plague and reflected about the experience:
Dr. Rieux resolved to compile this chronicle, so that he should not be one of those who hold their peace but should bear witness in favor of those plague-stricken people; so that some memorial of the injustice and outrage done to them might endure; and to state quite simply what we learn in time of pestilence: that there are more things to admire in men than to despise . . . Nonetheless, he knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of final victory. It could only be the record of what had had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts, despite their personal afflictions, by all who, while unable to be saints, but refusing to bow down to pestilences, strive their utmost to be healers.
In many years of designing AIS assignments we’ve found no better advice to give our students.
AUTHORS:
Gary Pavela
Gary Pavela, J.D., is a co-founder of the Academic Integrity Seminar. He received his law degree from the University of Illinois and was a Fellow at the University of Wisconsin Center for Behavioral Science and Law. He clerked for Judge Alfred Murrah of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit and taught at the Federal Judicial Center in Washington, D.C. (the training arm of the United States Courts). Pavela was designated a Fellow of the National Association of College and University Attorneys (identified as individuals who have “brought distinction to higher education and to the practice of law on behalf of colleges and universities across the nation’’) and served on the Board of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University. He taught in the University of Maryland Honors College for over twenty years and was designated a University of Maryland “Outstanding Faculty Educator” by the Maryland Parents’ Association.
DeForest McDuff
DeForest McDuff, Ph.D, is a co-founder of the Academic Integrity Seminar. He has a doctorate in economics from Princeton University, where he was a winner of the Towbes Teaching Prize for outstanding undergraduate teaching. He works as an economic consultant at Insight Economics (a nationwide economic consulting firm he founded in 2017) and is an adjunct teaching professor in the Department of Economics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Gregory Pavela
Gregory Pavela, Ph.D, has a doctorate in sociology from the University of Florida. He serves as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of Public Health at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) and is a past Chair of the Ethics Section, American Public Health Association. Greg received the “President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching” at UAB as well as the “Graduate Dean’s Excellence in Mentorship Award.”
Justin Coen
Justin Coen has a J.D. from Duke University and undergraduate degrees in accounting and English from the University of Maryland. While at Maryland, Justin served as the Chair of the Student Honor Council and was instrumental in developing the University’s Honor Pledge. Justin has advised the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance and later served as a senior regulatory attorney at the Office of the Staff Judge Advocate (JAG), U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command. He is currently a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of the Venable Law firm.
