Ethics in Education, Teaching, Research and Investigation

May 30, 2013 / Posted in  Education, Ethics

Ethics in education is as important as ethics in the educational process.  Education (from the Latin educationem that came from the root educare was a series of social codes and manners to live well but evolved to mean a systematic stylized school and training for work usually within government or religion and is related to the homonym ēdūcō (“I lead forth, I take out; I raise up, I erect”) from ē- (“from, out of”) and dūcō (“I lead, I conduct”) indicating selflessness and the fulfillment of social ethics) is defined as the action or the process of imparting or acquiring general to specific knowledge, developing and expanding the powers of reasoning, critical analysis and ultimately reaching a serious and circumspective judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for life at all stages from formal studies from kindergarten through postgraduate studies such as found at universities and institutes.

Formal school structures have existed since 3000 BCE in Egypt with the first university (a school with separate colleges of study, usually medicine, agriculture, and law with religion creating justification of laws and deifying lawgivers from Hammurabi to Moses) appearing around 1772 BCE with the largest university said to be established at Nalanda in 427 CE in Bihar, India (it ceased to exist only when zealous Muslims led by the fanatic Bakhtiyar Khilji, a Turk sacked it, burned the library, and executed its scholars who were all Buddhist monks¹), with libraries for academic centers flourishing in the city of Alexandria in 330 BCE that were destroyed only by religiously intolerant zealots, as with Hypatia with the carnage carried over by the Coptic Pope Theophilius.

Education exists only if it is successfully translated and transferred from one generation to another through a systematic program of training, translation, research, investigation, acquisition and distribution and dissemination of skills The educational process includes teaching of subject matter, testing and assessment, and the development of new theories and insights given detailed investigation and research.  The educational process involves a minimum of three traits or abilities: Auditory: The learning of the auditory is based on the listening to and the comprehension of instructions, text and subject matter, and rules and regulations that are associated with assessment. Visual: The learning of the visual is based on the seeking that what is being learned as well as understanding, comprehending, retaining and using what is also based on observation. Kinesthetic: The learning of the kinesthetic aspects of education is based on hands-on work, including the writing of assignments and taking of examinations orally or mechanically, preparing presentations and projects, and resilience in fashioning opportunities for others to master the same information and skills.

No discussion of ethics in any branch or at academic level in education can be a one-sided discussion.  It is not something that can be preached and not taught, spoken and not detailed, praised and not practiced, nor can it be empty words, phrases, sentences, paragraphs or complete works without substance, wisdom and the strength of form that will encourage others to reach out and reach up to obtain the same prize of hagia Sophia (Ảγία Σοφία): knowledge where scholars meet to obtain supreme enlightenment from the gods: Ναός της Ἁγίας τοῦ Θεοῦ Σοφίας: they are the Θεοῦ universal, the ancient אֱלֹהִ֔ים (the powers or forces in the plural form—both as an adjective and as a verb), who keeps the search for de luxe burning.

Academically, students, teachers and administrators must look not just at students being ethical but also teachers and administrators being ethical in preparation, presentation, assessment and prediction.  Psychologists and especially educational psychologies have looked at students and note that nearly all students learn ethics by observing the adults in their lives: how they act, what research they have done, when they have investigated anything substantially and fully, and if they have ever published their findings following a rigorous peer review.

It frequently happens in today’s society among the community, student body, faculty and administrators that there is a perception that it is acceptable to cheat, plagiarize, pirate and pass of as our own work as long as we do not get caught, as has happened with major world leaders from the Ministers of Education and Defense to Vladimir Putin of Russia.  This theft of intellectual property by overly paraphrasing or outright plagiarism by any means including the pathetic rise of hacking is similar to adults who, when shopping in a store, pick up an item that they want, and put it in their briefcase or purse and leave the store–or even more commonly, walk away with extra change because the clerk made a mistake, thinking to themselves “it is found money” or “the store can afford it as it charges too much for what I buy”. This is as much a theft as a consumer leaving a store, deliberately walking away with an article without paying for it, or when the customer realizes that he or she did not pay for something at the bottom of the shopping cart the clerk did not see and charge for and fails to return to the store to rectify the oversight. This is not premeditated theft in most cases, but it is deliberate meditated theft and a rejection of ethical values and proves that the thief has no ethics.

Theft of property, intellectual as well as tangible, is very common among major corporations, as when Bill Gates stole from Steven Jobs, and Jobs began his initial entry into the world of computers with money he stole from his partner Steven Wozinak.  Such theft was common and still is as ethics plays a very small role in any business as was the case with Ross Perot who created his Electronic Data Systems empire (EDS) by taking and misusing computer time from his employer IBM,² Do to Perot’s support of political operatives, the Department of Justice was silent when Hewlett-Packard bought out EDS³ in defiance of the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976⁴ with mergers and acquisitions over a certain size, both companies are required to file a “Notification and Report Form” describing the transaction with the Federal Trade Commission and the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, but the deafening silence of George W. Bush further highlighted the corruption of his administration that was as venal as that under Fujimori in Perú, Pinochet in Chile, and other third world dictatorship, with Bush taking orders from the Koch Brothers (Industries), Bain Capital, and others whom Bush called “my friends”⁵ but theft of supplies, equipment, time and other properties of a employer are overlooked as if they were rights and gifts and the issue of ethics does not come up unless the thief is caught—but if he or she is successful they become “Silicone Pirates”⁶.  Many times politicians, like corporations and professors, make decisions that may be technically legal but are ethically wrong.  This is often seen by students who follow suit as with the theft of copyrighted (intellectual property) material by the hacker Aaron Swartz and his gaggle of goons at Demand Progress.⁷

It is absurd and intellectually insulting for adults in academe, business and industry, or government to expect students to behave in a more ethical manner than we as adults behave ourselves.  It is equally foolish to expect students to tell the truth when there are adults, for example like Sarah Palin who attack Barrack Obama on Memorial Day, 2013, who not only stretch the authenticity of a claim but have no veracity or accountability expected of them or offered by them.⁸ As for Sarah Palin’s ability and knowledge to be President of the USA, she did not know who was Margaret Thatcher⁹ or any substantive answers to basic political and economic conditions, and said to ABC interviewer Charles Gibson asked her what insight she had gained from living so close to Russia, and she responded: “They’re our next-door neighbors, and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska”.¹⁰ that is technically correct since there is in the middle of the Bering Strait are two small, sparsely populated islands: Big Diomede, which sits in Russian territory, and Little Diomede, which is part of the United States. At their closest, these two islands are a little less than two and a half miles apart, which means that, on a clear day, you can definitely see one from the other.¹¹ but it is a vast desolate span of emptiness.  At the same time the Alaska governor claimed expertise in areas unknown shows disregard and contempt for all concepts and rules of ethics and learning.¹²

When I was in primary and secondary school, later in college and then university, I was, along with the rest of my classmates, frequently lectured on the ethics of doing individual work—of course in those days there were no photocopiers, no computers and no Internet, but today all exist and most papers turned into me as a professor are either full pages or no less than one or two paragraphs that are copied directly out of Wikipedia or from other Internet sites without attribution or accreditation or recognition of the intellectual property rights of the original author)s) or sponsors. At the same time, then or now, I would/will commonly witness a teacher or an administrator behave in an unethical manner and when I had the alleged audacity to call them on their theft, they would refuse to accept responsibility for their actions or cite their rank or position—none of which I have ever carried about or took notice, as all teachers are expected to models for students and not just wage earners. I must acknowledge that politicians are no better, as many act and respond the same way, as when in the 2011 Perú presidential campaign, Keiko Fujimori would have her aids carry bags of rice into the homes of the poor and the mountain people soliciting their votes after

The average Peruano earns $3 a day and paid education fees for the Fujimori children to attend schools in the USA, was it ethical? (La Republica)

having Perú pay for the USA education of Alberto Fujimori’s four children who did not attend Peru schools even though ¹³ as the average income of the average Peruano is $3 a day and declining (the Fujimori campaign sent out an e-mail that read:

“Being a bit more than a month away from the runoff and wanting to contribute our two cents to Peru’s future, we have done a coordination meeting (…) and decided that the most pertinent things to be distributed by Keiko’s campaign team to poor people are the following options:

1. A bag with groceries that includes: 1 kg or rice, 1 kg of sugar, 1 kg of lentils or beans, 2 cans of milk and 2 cans of tuna fish (preferably in a translucent bag that can be requested in the cash register of Wong).

2. Donation of a king-sized blanket (they have to be new and preferably bagged in translucent bags) (I am attaching a blanket photo, they don’t have to be exactly the same but they are sold at any market).

3. Cash: In soles or dollars.”)

but it is far better than the $2 a day earned in mainland Communist China who are ignored by the nation’s billionaires with 83 sitting in China’s parliament¹⁴ The richest is Zong Qinghou, founder of Chinese drinks maker Wahaha, with an estimated fortune of $13 billion.]—quite similar to 2013 when wealthy people, many of whom made their fortunes in land, are already campaigning for the presidency by recording on video their intentions to carry food to the hungry of Peru in aims of winning the presidential palace in Lima for their five year term.

There is no difference from the corruption in Perú and the buying of offices legalized by the Supreme Court of the United States of America that legalized the personhood of corporations and granting them the right of unlimited and unreported billions to chosen conservative candidates with the writing of the opinion on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, 558 U.S. 310 (2010).¹⁵

The problem of greed is pervasive, universal, and pregnant for budding abuses and the decline of human rights and civil liberties. Morality becomes whimsical and at best a scourge used by unscrupulous clerics and perennial politicians. If this culture continues that everything is alright as long as a person or a company does not get caught, the society will fall apart, as society is no longer morally or ethically right.  To even claim that anyone is teaching ethics in such an evaporative environment is at best a bad joke.

The United States of (North) America is not the only united states. It is rank hypocrisy and xenophobic for the USA to consider itself the only “united states” as the Constitution of Mexico declares that Mexico is also a united states: the actual wording is “United Mexican States” in its 4 October 1824 Constitution.¹⁶

Brasil is also a  united states with 26 states in its federation and in 1891 was officially known as República dos Estados Unidos do Brasil, the name Brasil was replaced with Brazil during the depression and issuance of new money in an effort to gain foreign investors, with the monetary unit being a £.¹⁷

Constitucion Federal de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos (1824)

While the USA takes false pride in being the only “united states” While the USA also claims that its citizens are the only Americans, it ignores that all people born in either North or South America are also Americans by geographical definition based on the tectonic plates that hold up the continents, it is also a nation that holds other countries to a moral and ethical standard that the USA itself cannot and does not live up to the standards that are expected of other countries and their leaders, while the Congress of the USA has little ethics and fewer practioneers of ethics as seen in the subservience of Eric Cantor, Michele Bachmann, John Boehner and other Congressional Representatives to the Koch Brothers, while the most spite-filled Senators, such as Ted Cruz, Charles Grassley and Jim Inhofe, frothing against any foreign denunciation of its draconic policies and practices from drones to denying its all of its own citizens, especially women, equal rights, most other nations see the USA and its citizens as rank moral hypocrites.

Ethics and morality is a top down concept not bottom up.  We can only expect our weakest members of society to live up the ethical standards that are not only set by our leaders but practiced by them.  This includes ethics in education that has become more political than scholarly or reflecting the greatest good for all, especially with the introduction of separating and alienating voucher programs and home schooling that tests the bonds of public education.  As a society we can only expect our students to behave in as ethical a manner as the adults that impact their lives and when students see legalized murder with Stand Your Ground¹⁸ or Castle Law / Defense of Habitation Law arguments,¹⁹  It became a part of what is known as English law.²⁰  It was used by Cicero who argued that the law had “every description of religious rest” inasmuch as it concerned “the house of every individual citizen”, with later ministers, such as Matthew Henry, arguing that the prohibition of murder written into the Torah contains an exception for “legitimate self-defense”: “If a thief is caught breaking in and is struck so that he dies, the thief owes no blood-debt to the home-defender; but if the thief lives, he owes a blood-debt to the home defender and must make restitution”. Cf. Exodus 22:1-3: אִם-בַּמַּחְתֶּרֶת יִמָּצֵא הַגַּנָּב, וְהֻכָּה וָמֵת–אֵין לוֹ, דָּמִים, reflecting the ancient Code of Hammurabi (c. 1750 BCE) Law Number 21.²¹  It is on the Laws of Hammurabi that most ancient laws , including all of the Ten Commandments of which there are three completely different sets in the Book of Exodus.²² were based with many plagiarized and glossed into the Torah and the later Bible ordered compiled by Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea by the Emperor Constantine I for his creation that he styled as the Christian Church.²³

Students can only judge and determine that murder is no longer a crime if one considers that life is cheapened by location. This impact can be seen on the local, regional, and national levels as a means toward dominance²⁴  One of the strongest forces against universal ethics and ethical behavior comes with strong religious indoctrination where the individual practicing violence justifies aggression based on religious texts or on the preaching of a practioneers of the religion²⁵ To address this problem, education, training, professional ethics standards, and credentialing criteria must be infused with a robust communitarian ethos and a culturally pervasive ethic of care, but the problem is with elected officials and religious officiators who are determined to stay in power because of the prestige, power or wealth that comes from their station, speak out against world ethics.²⁶ The problem, especially with political figures, is that words misused lead commonly to misunderstandings, misconceptions and wrongful and harmful results that lead to bullying, war, and the ending of ethics and peace.²⁷ This is seen in the saber rattling of US Senator John McCain (R-AZ) who is determined to drag the USA into a war against the revolutionaries reaching out to topple Assad of Syria to install a jihadist/Sharia law-based (a moral code or religious law known as قانون إسلامي qānūn Islāmī) radical Islam government.²⁸  The lust for power, the claim of a “war on terrorism” and the elevation of one ideology over another shows the psychological breakdown within the individual’s psyche and the discarding of ethics as it rejects the equality of people and opportunity and the right of self-determination—principles that McCain, DeMint and their neo-con cable of war-demanders show regularly without giving peace a chance.²⁹

Bullying

A corollary of the lack of ethics in clandestine covert operations in any nation equally exists in the world of expanding education.  When a teacher, a student, or even an administrator or an entire administration of any school feels threatened by an unknown source, raison d’être, or other cause célèbre those who feel under attack, imaginary or real, will seek some ultimate solution to end the hostility or war—even by taking unethical steps to stop perceived persecution or hostilities. This materializes in grade degradation or lowering, in punitive steps against those who are visualized (imaginary or real) as the aggressors, and are handicapped because of status, peer group, or utility. A teacher, especially who feels vulnerable, can lower scores in areas where there are no examinations of competency, such as in aptitude, attitude, participation, and so forth to the detriment of a student or group of students. A student can vociferously clamor for attention by being disruptive, disagreeable, or handing in plagiarized papers or showing contempt for intellectual property when a teacher artificially lowers grades, penalizes performance based on appearance, race, sex, sexuality, gender, and so forth.³⁰

For example, US Senator John McCain (R-AZ) faithfully follows in the fetid, fusty, foul footsteps of former US Senator, foreign-policy mover and racist Jim DeMint (R-SC);³¹ as both men are members of the secretive Family of C Street (sometimes known as The Fellowship, that includes Senators Charles Grassley (R-IA), Jim DeMint (R-SC),³² John Ensign (R-NV),³³ Sam Brownback (R-KS) a convert to Roman Catholicism who left the USA Senate to become Governor of Kansas, and other men (women are allowed only in the kitchen where they cook and clean, and sometimes forced into satisfying sexual urges of the male members³⁴ in keeping with the emperor Constantine’s concept of Christianity that he fashioned from existing Paulinity.) all of who have ties with Nazism and fascism)³⁵ that seek Armageddon to overthrow democracy and install their version of a never-changing stagnant and terrifying theocracy to conquer the world.³⁶ Interestingly, C Street with its strong ties to a warrior Jesus³⁷and an immediate Second Coming (Παρουσία, actually translates as “official temporary visit”.³⁸.

Here, too, we find similarities within the psychology of ethics in education, where a student, teacher, or administrator attempts to overthrow that/those power(s) that seem to be contrary to the leanings of the individual or group of like-minded individuals and takes punitive steps to dissuade or dismiss the authority placed in power previously by any means including libel, slander, false record or contrived reviews, group-led aspersions, and filtering reality into a kaleidoscope of unreal transmogrified interpretations of papers, notes, memoranda, and so forth.³⁹

Child suicide bomber

The actions of adults directly and significantly effect the actions of those younger them, and especially engrains hatred, propensity to violence, and a willingness to take unnecessary risks and mangled machismo in the very young who find “games” of war, murder and slaughter amusing without full comprehension of the finality of aggression and “defense” as seen now, today, in the numerous suicide bombings in the Middle East and Muslim clerics calling for the beheading of soldiers who are compelled to participate in wars. As John Dewey noted, daily living is a series of choices made, many involving discriminating between things that might be considered “right” and things that might be considered “wrong” with a set of principles allowing one to make these judgments and formatting an ethical core of the individual that permeates the classroom and reaches out to the community and world.  The problem with Dewey’s dicta/hypothesis is that it displaces the imperative nature of mastering subject matter with the broad aspect of localized and not universal ethics.  To retrain students in genuine ethics requires the professional educator to constantly, repetitiously, and nearly religious introduce alternative choices into classroom discussion and dialogue, so that the student(s) can determine individually and collectively the nature and justification of right and wrong—none of which requires any ontological, theological or religious seeds or creeds.  Doing so enables everyone from the student to the teacher and even the community to opt for the opportunity of self-discovery.  For example, in the case of bullying, when a young child pushes another in a playground setting, evoking a punch in response, the child who is retaliated against discovers the consequences (positive and negative) of his or her choice.  This of course can curb violence, or if the initial attack was perpetrated by a bigger or older bully, it leads to a mental enslavement where the smaller child⁴⁰ will surrender in the face of strength as with Latin American and other Third World nations submitting meekly to the bullies of the First World, especially to the hegemony and cruelty as espoused and enjoined by those who would control and exercise suzerainty over weaker nations who sit in the Congress of the USA.  The tragedy of is that ethics in education does not just die, it has had little to no chance to live or impact the lives of the young, of students, faculty, administrators, and the community it is a worldwide epidemic everywhere.  To claim one thing and do the opposite demonstrates a gross lack of ethics or ethical practice.

When it comes to investigation, research and publication, many faculty members feel intimidated, lost in the morass of documentation, and with an uncertainty as how to proceed.  This is doubled when the faculty reads professional journals in their own areas and finds the quality diminished, and many articles duplicates of previous commentaries, with little relevance for the day.  At that point the faculty, singularly or collectively, needs to speak out, write the editors of the journal their concerns and offer prospectus on how it can be improved so that future generations in their field will enhance the field with more current and relevant studies.  Ethics in education demands a constant surveillance and survey of literature, a reinaugeration of textuality and subject matters, and a movement to greater quality by establishing guidelines, working harmoniously with peers, and seeking the most experienced members to review individual works of the group.⁴¹  Confidentiality must be assured and practiced, borders established as to what can be investigated when dealing with mortals, and suggestions for improvement that have substance with examples given.⁴²  The critical issue is that there is justice, morality and understanding in all educational environments and time to insure and to create a new focus on ethics that can become a lasting part of the educational process. Without treating all students equally, most students will feel discriminated against and internally, if not externally collectively or singularly, rebel and with their vocal or active revolution the reality of ethics will be sent to the block to be dispatched from the classroom and their lives and plagiarism will increase and with its ascent will come the dissent that leads to the theft, always unwarranted and never justifiable under any circumstance, of intellectual property and the ending of any reason to investigate, research, translate and interpret that which is not yet commonly discussed, or even stop debate before it starts.⁴³

Ethics in education, as Socrates noted, requires that all things are questioned. Socrates went to trial and accepted the verdict of his peers or countrymen that he had offended the gods by having people question the existence of the gods (he never suggested nor taught people to reject, nor accept, any god or group of deities),⁴⁴

The Εὐθύφρων, “Euthuphron”: right-minded or sincere, is the events and time taking place during the weeks leading up to Socrates trial, that adds a twist on lines 396a and 396d where Cratylus is introduced because of his attempts to define piety or holiness that had no relationship to the trial or Socrates, but which medieval monks, masters and the Church fed upon. Socrates used this opportunity to define piety as a universal ethic: piety has to be a fundamental that applies to all, not an example of an act (5d). Euthyphro’s second definition was absurd, claiming that piety was what was or is pleasing to the gods (6e-7a), but Socrates scoffed at such vanity as he noted that even the gods, like books on gods, disagree as to what exactly was pleasing to the gods (similar to the gods of the Genesis story demanded the death of Abraham’s son but not spelling out which son, as Ishmael was the older and most likely victim, but Isaac was the younger and blemish less and thus more desirable). The third definition offered by Euthyphro was to amend his second definition by adding the qualifier “all” that Socrates pointed out was a form of quibbling.  While Socrates suggested a fourth definition, that “piety is a species of the genus ‘justice’”(12d)⁴⁵—that required a definition of justice, building up to the final definition that justice requires sacrifice in order to obtain knowledge: as the exchange knowledge or wisdom is the highest good (14e) and sacrifice does not mean denial for that is hubris (from ancient Greek ὐβρις that translates as extreme pride or arrogance.)⁴⁶ In the ancient Greek world, those who shamed and humiliated the victim for their personal pleasure or gratification were cited as men of hubris and publicly avoided since the word had a strong sexual connotation indicating that the sadist sexually tortured the victim to gratify his sexual passions, usually for anal intercourse, without respecting the right of the abused, usually an underage non-consenting male,  to say no and be left alone; in politics hubris indicated a politician who used his office for personal gain even if it meant removing tenants without cause and giving no respite to those who suffered for his selfishness.⁴⁷

The Apology ⁴⁸ was the most direct response to all questions put before all people: that the searcher, researcher, investigator, teacher in truth knew too little and would spend a lifetime in an attempt to know more. As Socrates put it, not until he realized his own ignorance could he pursue investigation, research, the conduct of inquiry and be a truly ethical person.

In the second speech in the Apology, Socrates showed the power of ethics: being true to oneself as well as honest with the world.  According to Plato, Meletus, the prosecutor, initially accused Socrates of being an atheist, then said that Socrates had introduced new gods of wisdom, a point that Socrates took as his saber to attack the prosecutor.  Socrates showed the fatal contradiction in Meletus accusation – how does someone whom the prosecution holds to be a complete atheist come to be accused of introducing new divinities or religious novelties such as a worldview of ethics and ethical behavior?

Anytus, son of a prominent Athenian, Anthemion, also entered his accusations because he was not treated with extra favor by Socrates as the youth expected because of his parentage; Socrates warned the youth not to be puffed up with pride because of who he was the son of, since the sons of many prominent men are inferior to their parents. That brought from Anytus a stern warning that his “running people down” could get him into trouble (Meno 94e-95a), but Socrates retorted that to diminish the truth for personal gain or health or life would be a greater fault as it was the denial of truth that must be unvarnished but as naked as the youths that played in the gymnasium, unafraid of anyone or anything. Socrates noted that the ethicist worships (recognizes) all gods (reasons, hypotheses, ideas) and merges them into a framework for all people to use or discard by free choice  In the second speech, Socrates ridiculed that there were those afraid of death (tantamount to being afraid of learning) since no one from the dead returned to explain its benefits or liabilities, and thus death was but one more journey that all people would have to take and it would be the most enlightening travel for the sojourners on the planet.

Death of Socrates (by David) before drinking the Hemlock

In the third speech of the Philosopher’s Ảπολογία, Socrates welcomed death as one more learning experience, noting that those who shied from discovery were not only depriving themselves of greater knowledge but depriving the world community. For this reason Socrates reasoned that to go into an eternity of a single, quiet, night would be one thing, and that not too welcomed, or else to have the opportunity as a transmigrated soul to converse with, and to question, the heroes in Hades would be more educational and a guarantee that wisdom lived on.  Socrates closing words in his third speech were simple, straightforward, and strong: “The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways – I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.” Socrates did make he did believe in the gods (plural, not as Tomas Aquinas libeled him and claimed he believed in one god), but that he questioned the gods abilities (Apology 19b-c).⁴⁹

Students at School of Philosophy

Phaedo : Φαίδων, Phaidōn⁵⁰ is devoted to the plots and plans to furnish Socrates a route to escape the death penalty—but that meant leaving Athens. Most of the work of Φαίδων is devoted to Socrates’ discussion of an afterlife. The Philosopher saw the “soul” as immortal: the body will die and the body decompose, but the “soul” lives on in the minds and thoughts of men and is therefore immortal, opining that one can sentence another to death, but the one who lasts throughout the passing of time is the one with the real soul as the original property of the soul remains remembered. Since Socrates believed in Recollection (things that happened in a different life) those recollections came from the soul that existed before the corporal body was formed and given birth. To that end the soul is greater than the body regardless of its longevity or being, provided it is born. Socrates did not rule out suicide, but saw suicide as the ultimate expression of man’s uniqueness and specialness and suicide should be done only when there was no alternative (to this end, Socrates technically committed suicide by drinking the goblet filled with Hemlock that the executioner brought to Socrates, as he administered the drug himself after making certain that a cock was given to the god of medicine, as his death was necessary to inspire others to keep on questioning and fighting back with words those who would discourage investigation, research and constant questions in quest of truth.⁵¹.  Physical senses or sensations are not as valid as intellectual senses, as mortal senses can fail but not intellectual curiosity: “Did you ever reach those ⁵² (truths) with any bodily sense? – and I speak not of these alone, but of absolute greatness, and health, and strength, and, in short, of the reality or true nature of everything. Is the truth of them ever perceived through the bodily organs? Or rather, is not the nearest approach to the knowledge of their several natures made by him who so orders his intellectual vision as to have the most exact conception of the essence of each thing he considers?”⁵³ Socrates did not fear death because, as he declared: “I have great hopes that there is something in store for the dead…, something better for the good than for the wicked.”⁵⁴

Socrates with Alkibiades and Xanthippe by Luca Giordano

Socrates reasoned that Athens had provided him with a forum, and he had a duty to respect the due process of the law of the city that had nurtured him.  Realizing that he had selected to obey the law in order for others to change it, Socrates met with his wife Xanthippe and their infant son in her arms (they would have three sons: Lamprocles, Sophroniscus, and Menexenus; it is assumed that she was forty years young, of a prominent family, and known to be a shrew who poured either hot water or the contents of a chamber pot, such as urine, on Socrates; her name means “yellow horse”, from the Greek ξανθός “xanthos” (blonde) and ἵππος “hippos” (horse) and is the subject of legends), to strengthen them with his resolve that he would cultivate the souls (minds) of all who would not step down from worldwide principles and ethics merely to avoid death. Just before his death Socrates last words were: Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius; please pay it and don’t let it pass. That Socrates called on Crito demonstrates the Philosopher’s rationality, as Crito was wealthy and could afford a cock rather than buying a plain rooster. ⁵⁵  Every religion has portrayed the cock on its sacred vessels.⁵⁶

Aesculapius was the God of Medicine.  Socrates words implied that he felt he owed a debt to the God of Medicine because of the cup of Hemlock he had just swallowed would open new doors and the cock was the chosen bird (it is not rooster in the Greek) as the cock crows with the advent of light as the symbol of a new day and a new opportunity to learn more.⁵⁷

Amongst his closing remarks Socrates asked his friends who were with him as he died “to visit punishments and troubles on his three sons if they seemed to care more about riches than about virtue, or if they seemed to be pretentious.” For Socrates, ethics permeated everything: from birth, life, dying, and in death—to the subsequent generations of family and community.

Socrates encouraged his students to question everyone and everything including parents and the government so that each inquirer would best understand his (he had no female students as women were not considered on par with men) inner group (the family) and extended group) the community, and the known world—and with that knowledge he would know himself and become a free person capable of making wise decisions and choices by pursuing the conduct of inquiry in all things.⁵⁸  Ethics, seeking out absolute truth that applies to all people for all times and does detract from or take away from individual choice, is what lasts.  The educator’s obligation is to keep the conduct of inquiry fluid and flowing, flourishing, and furnishing answers not yet asked.