Moral Identity

Several years ago, a friend of mine, and Wharton School graduate, suggested that I read the work of one of his favorite professors – Adam Grant.  Since that time, I have become a fan of Professor Grant’s work.  This week, Dr. Grant wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times regarding AI and cheating.  Unfortunately, Dr. Grant wrote that of his 95 undergraduate students at Wharton, “[H]ardly any students saw cheating as a violation of integrity.”  Like Dr. Grant, I am both shocked and dismayed by this response.  Throughout my time as a student, I attended schools that took academic integrity quite seriously, and was raised to value honesty and integrity above all else.  As such, I would rather fail a test than to know that I passed because I cheated.

In Dr. Grant’s essay, he acknowledges that AI has becomes more ubiquitous, and students have become more willing to engage in “cheating”. Consequently, faculty are engaging in a cat and mouse game of trying to create ways prevent the students from cheating.  I have been a part of these conversations and like Dr. Grant, I agree that this is a fool’s errand.  As he states, “[C]reating obstacles is never going to be enough.”  Instead, he argues that the way forward is to focus less on outcomes and more on process.  As Dr. Grant puts it – “What we achieve may define our success. How we achieve it determines our character.”

Tomorrow, the faculty of The Beech Hill School will meet to begin preparation for a new school year.  We will spend considerable amounts of time discussing AI and academic integrity, as well as things like the changes to the Dress Code and student use of computers during “free time.”  Throughout these conversations, we understand that at BHS, we engage deeply in helping our students to form, what Dr. Grant calls moral identities – or “the term psychologists use for caring deeply about being a person of honor and integrity.”  This is not easy work, and many schools shy away from these endeavors.  As we prepare for the year ahead at BHS, we realize that moral development is a key component of our mission and more important than ever.