When Virtue Meets the Institution: Cato, Phocion, and the Ethical Life of the Educator

What can two ancient statesmen teach us about remaining ethical when the institution itself begins asking us to compromise?

“The ethical educator is not the one who never bends; it is the one who knows what may bend without breaking, and what must remain unbroken.”

There are moments in the life of an educator when teaching ceases to be merely a pedagogical activity and becomes a moral one. We may not always recognize those moments immediately. They rarely arrive announcing themselves as ethical dilemmas. More often, they come disguised as administrative requests, institutional priorities, student needs, retention concerns, performance indicators, or seemingly compassionate exceptions.

A teacher may be asked to reconsider a grade because a student is about to fail. An assessment may be softened because institutional results have declined. A standard may be interpreted more generously because enrollment is at stake. A procedure may be quietly altered because “this is not the time to be so strict.” Sometimes such decisions genuinely serve students. At other times, they merely protect an institution from the consequences of its own decisions.

The difficulty is that these two situations can look remarkably similar. This is where an ancient conversation between two statesmen, Phocion of Athens and Cato the Younger of Rome, can unexpectedly illuminate contemporary educational life. Plutarch's Parallel Lives does not offer us a handbook for teacher ethics. Yet his comparison of Phocion and Cato gives us something perhaps more valuable: two models of moral character placed under political pressure. Both men attempted to preserve their integrity while serving societies whose circumstances made virtue increasingly difficult to practice. Plutarch's comparison allows us to ask a question that remains profoundly relevant to education:

What kind of person must an educator become in order to remain ethical when the environment surrounding education is not always ethical?

The educator is never merely an employee

One of the most tempting ways to understand teaching is as a professional function. We have curricula, learning outcomes, assessment policies, institutional regulations, performance indicators, and administrative procedures. The teacher operates within the system and is expected to perform competently within it.

But education is not simply technical work. Donald Schön's (1987) conception of the reflective practitioner is useful here because professional practice frequently involves uncertain, unstable, unique, and conflicting situations for which no rule can provide a complete answer. Schön's idea of reflection-in-action recognizes that professionals must think while acting, interpret situations as they unfold, and sometimes reconsider the very assumptions with which they entered the situation.

Teaching is full of precisely these situations. A policy may say one thing, while the particular learner before us seems to require another. A standard may be educationally justified, but its rigid application in one circumstance may produce an unjust outcome. Conversely, an apparently compassionate exception may gradually undermine the very standard that makes the assessment meaningful. The teacher therefore inhabits a space between rules and judgment. And this is precisely where Plutarch's Cato and Phocion become interesting.

Cato: the moral necessity of the line

Plutarch's (1919) Cato the Younger was formed around an unusually severe conception of virtue. Having encountered Stoic philosophy, he devoted himself to moral and political study. Plutarch tells us that, among the virtues, Cato particularly admired “that steady and inflexible justice which is not to be wrought upon by favour or compassion.”

That sentence initially sounds troubling to modern educators. Justice that is not moved by compassion? We rightly value compassion in education. Students are human beings, not numbers. Their circumstances matter. Their difficulties matter. Their lives outside the classroom matter. Yet Cato's severity asks us to consider something that compassion can sometimes obscure:

What happens when compassion itself becomes a reason to abandon principle?

Imagine an assessment designed to determine whether a student has achieved a particular learning outcome. The student has not achieved it. The institution, however, has a strong interest in improving its pass rate. The teacher is encouraged to “help” the student by lowering the threshold, altering the weighting, or redefining what constitutes satisfactory performance. At that moment, compassion and compromise can become almost indistinguishable. Cato would force us to stop and ask:

What exactly am I protecting?

Am I protecting the learner's opportunity to learn? Or am I protecting the institution from the consequences of a student not yet being ready? These are not the same thing. Cato's contribution to educational ethics, then, is not that teachers should become severe. It is that educators need non-negotiable principles. There must be things we cannot sell, exchange, disguise, or redefine merely because circumstances have become inconvenient.

But Cato alone is not enough

And this is precisely why Phocion matters. If we turned Cato into the complete model for educational ethics, we might create a teacher who confuses integrity with inflexibility. Educational reality is too complicated for that.

A student may fail an oral examination because of an inappropriate assessment condition rather than because the student lacks the intended competence. A learner may need another form of demonstrating knowledge. A rigid procedure may inadvertently defeat the pedagogical purpose for which the procedure was created. Here, Phocion's example becomes important.

Plutarch (1919) describes Phocion as a man whose virtue resembled Cato's but whose circumstances and manner differed. Both possessed “severity and kindness,” “caution and bravery,” concern for others and fearlessness for themselves, and an “eager pursuit of justice.” This is not simply a comparison between a “strict” man and a “kind” man. It is more subtle. Both are virtuous, but virtue takes different forms when it encounters different circumstances. That distinction matters enormously for educators.

Adaptation is not the same as corruption

Perhaps one of the most important ethical distinctions an educator can make is between adapting a practice and manipulating a principle. Adaptation asks: How can I preserve the educational purpose while changing the way I reach it? Manipulation asks: How can I change the educational purpose so that the institutional outcome becomes easier to obtain? The difference may be almost invisible from the outside.

Consider a student who has not succeeded in a particular assessment. An ethical adaptation might involve a) another opportunity to demonstrate the same learning; b) a different modality when the original modality is pedagogically inappropriate; c) additional formative feedback; d) reasonable accommodation; e)  a reassessment genuinely designed to measure the same outcome.

The principle remains intact. But imagine changing the standard itself because failing students negatively affects institutional statistics. Now the educational purpose has become subordinate to an external objective. The distinction is subtle but fundamental: To adapt the path is not necessarily to alter the destination. Phocion helps us understand the first. Cato warns us about the second.

The danger of ethical drift

Perhaps the most dangerous ethical compromises in education are not dramatic. They are incremental. A teacher rarely wakes up one morning and decides: Today I will abandon my professional integrity. Instead, ethical drift may begin with a small exception. Just this once. Then another: This student really needs it. Then: The institution is under pressure. Then: Everyone is doing it. Eventually, the exception becomes normal.

And once the practice becomes normal, the language surrounding it changes. We stop calling it an exception. We call it flexibility. We stop calling it lowering the standard. We call it being student-centered. We stop calling it institutional pressure. We call it supporting student success.

This is where Aristotle becomes relevant. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (1999) argues that moral virtue develops through habitual action: we become just by performing just acts, temperate by performing temperate acts, and courageous through courageous action. The insight is unsettling when applied to professional life. We do not merely make ethical decisions; our repeated decisions make us into ethical or unethical professionals.

Every exception therefore participates in character formation. The question is not only: “Was this decision acceptable?” but: “What kind of teacher am I becoming by repeatedly making decisions like this?” That is a much more demanding question.

From standards to character

This is one reason virtue ethics offers something that a purely rule-based approach to teacher ethics sometimes cannot. A rule can tell us: Do not falsify grades. But professional life is rarely that simple. What about:

Rules cannot anticipate every circumstance. Aristotle's concept of phronesis, or practical wisdom, becomes important here. Practical wisdom is not simply knowing ethical rules; it involves discerning what should be done in particular circumstances. Contemporary discussions of Aristotle emphasize precisely this connection between virtue, experience, judgment, and context.

David Carr (2023) similarly connects phronesis with the challenge of cultivating sound moral judgment rather than merely producing conformity to abstract principles.  This gives us an important three-part model:

Principle + Judgment + Reflection

Cato gives us the first. Phocion complicates the second. Schön helps us understand the third.

Cato asks: Where is your line?

Every educator needs a line that cannot be crossed. Not because every institutional rule is sacred. Not because every policy is perfectly designed. Not because compassion is weakness. But because without boundaries, professional judgment can become rationalization.

Cato's question might therefore be translated into contemporary educational language:

What would I refuse to do even if refusing made my professional life more difficult?

Would I falsify evidence of learning, certify competence that I know has not been demonstrated, manipulate assessment data, deliberately lower a standard because institutional performance requires it, or would I remain silent about a practice I know is educationally dishonest simply because speaking might inconvenience me?

These questions are uncomfortable precisely because they reveal that professional integrity sometimes has a price. Plutarch portrays Cato as someone whose virtue was not particularly popular. Indeed, when comparing him with Phocion, Plutarch observes that Cato's old-fashioned virtue appeared in an age whose customs had become corrupted and describes it as being like fruit that appears “out of season.”

That metaphor deserves to stay with us. What if integrity sometimes feels out of season? Now ask yourself: What if you the ethical educator occasionally finds herself or himself strangely out of step with the institution? What if saying no sounds old-fashioned? What if maintaining an assessment standard is interpreted as being “difficult”? What if refusing to manipulate data is regarded as insufficiently “team-oriented”? What if telling a student, “You have not reached the standard yet, but I will help you get there,” is less comfortable than simply changing the standard? Cato reminds us that being out of season is not necessarily evidence that one is wrong.

Phocion asks: But what can be changed?

Yet the opposite danger is equally real. An educator may become so attached to principles that the principles cease serving human beings. This is where Phocion protects us from a simplistic Cato-inspired morality. The ethical teacher must sometimes ask: Am I defending the principle, or am I defending my interpretation of the principle?

There is an enormous difference. A learning standard may be non-negotiable while the route toward demonstrating it remains negotiable. A teacher may preserve academic rigor while becoming more humane, may maintain assessment validity while offering another opportunity, may reject grade inflation while increasing formative support, and may refuse institutional manipulation while still asking whether institutional procedures themselves need reform. Notice that this is not moral weakness; it may actually require more moral intelligence than simply saying no.

The educator between Cato and Phocion

Perhaps, then, the ethical educator lives between two temptations. On one side stands compliance without integrity: “The institution wants this, so I will do it.” On the other stands integrity without judgment: “My principle is correct, therefore every adaptation is wrong.” Between them lies something more difficult: principled flexibility.

Principled flexibility means knowing:

This is where Schön's reflective practitioner becomes particularly useful. Reflection-in-action requires professionals to interpret complex situations rather than simply apply prefabricated technical solutions.  The ethical teacher therefore needs to become an investigator of their own practice. Not: “What does the policy say?” alone. But: “What is happening here?” “What values are competing?” “Whose interests are being served?” “What am I assuming?” “What am I being asked to compromise?” “What would remain defensible if the decision were made public?” And perhaps the most important question:

“What kind of educator will I become if I continue making decisions this way?”

The hidden curriculum of institutional life

There is another reason this matters. Teachers do not teach only through what they say. They teach through what they normalize. If students discover that standards can be negotiated whenever pressure becomes sufficiently strong, they learn something about institutions. If they see teachers maintaining fairness even when doing so is inconvenient, they learn something else. If they see a teacher acknowledge an error, reconsider a decision, and adapt without abandoning principle, they learn something even more sophisticated: Ethics is not perfection. Ethics is responsible judgment.

This is particularly important because education always has a hidden curriculum. Students observe:

The teacher therefore becomes an ethical model whether intending to be one or not.

Parker Palmer's (1998) work on teacher identity and integrity is especially relevant here. Palmer argues that good teaching cannot ultimately be reduced to technique; teaching emerges from the teacher's identity and integrity.  This brings us back to Plutarch. Cato and Phocion were not remembered because they wrote manuals explaining virtue. They were remembered because their lives became arguments about virtue. Perhaps the same is true of teachers.

The courage to refuse and the wisdom to adapt

What, then, might we take from Cato and Phocion into contemporary educational life? Perhaps four principles.

1. Know what cannot be compromised. Cato reminds us that a professional without boundaries can easily become an instrument of institutional interests.

2. Know what can be adapted. Phocion reminds us that principles applied without attention to circumstances can become rigid and even counterproductive.

3. Examine the motives behind the exception. An exception made for the learner is not automatically ethical, and an exception demanded by the institution is not automatically unethical. The decisive question is what educational purpose the exception serves.

4. Reflect on the person you are becoming. Aristotle (1999) reminds us that repeated action forms character. Schön (1983) reminds us that professional knowledge develops through reflection on practice. Palmer (1998) reminds us that teaching is inseparable from identity and integrity.

Together, these perspectives move us beyond the simplistic opposition between strictness and kindness. The real opposition is between integrity and rationalization.

A small ethical test for educators

Perhaps we can condense all of this into a simple reflective test. Before bending a standard, changing a procedure, or making an exception, an educator might ask: a) What principle am I protecting? b) What am I changing? c) Why am I changing it? d) Who benefits? e) Who might be harmed? f) Would I make the same decision without institutional pressure? g) Am I adapting the path or changing the destination? h) Can I explain the decision honestly to my students and colleagues? And finally: If I repeatedly make decisions like this, who will I become? That last question takes us beyond compliance. It takes us into character.

When virtue is out of season

Plutarch's most provocative observation may therefore be his description of Cato's virtue as something that appeared “out of season.”  There is something deeply contemporary about that image. Every institution develops its own habits. Some are healthy. Others slowly become normalized.

A practice may begin as an exception and become policy; a policy may become culture; a culture may eventually become invisible. And then someone comes along and says: “Perhaps we should not do this.” And that person can become inconvenient. Sometimes they may indeed be stubborn. But sometimes they are simply reminding the institution of something it has forgotten.

The ethical educator therefore needs neither to imitate Cato completely nor to abandon Cato altogether. We need his capacity to recognize the non-negotiable, but we also need Phocion's sensitivity to circumstance. We need Aristotle's practical wisdom, Schön's reflective practice, and Palmer's understanding that professional integrity is inseparable from who the teacher becomes.

The goal is not to become a heroic educator who never compromises. That is probably impossible. Nor is it to become a perfectly compliant educator who never creates institutional discomfort. That may be worse. The goal is something more demanding: to become an educator capable of distinguishing compromise from adaptation, compassion from indulgence, flexibility from manipulation, and institutional loyalty from complicity. Perhaps this is what an ethical professional life ultimately requires. Not purity. Not rigidity. Not rebellion for its own sake. But discernment.

And perhaps the educator's deepest responsibility is not simply to ask, “What am I allowed to do?” but: “What kind of person am I becoming through what I choose to do?” Cato would probably insist that some answers should never be negotiable. Phocion would remind us that knowing how to apply them is another form of wisdom. And between the two stands the educator: navigating an imperfect institution while trying not to become imperfect in precisely the ways that institution makes easiest. That may be the real ethical life of teaching. 

San José, Costa Rica

Thursday, October 29, 2026

Blog Post #596 

Aristotle. (1999). Nicomachean ethics (W. D. Ross, Trans.). Batoche Books. (Original work published ca. 350 BCE).

Carr, D. (2023). The practical wisdom of phronesis in the education of purported virtuous character. Educational Theory, 73(2), 137–152.

Palmer, P. J. (1998). The courage to teach: Exploring the inner landscape of a teacher's life. Jossey-Bass.

Plutarch. (1919). The life of Cato the Younger (B. Perrin, Trans.). In Plutarch's Lives (Vol. 8). Harvard University Press.

Plutarch. (1919). The life of Phocion (B. Perrin, Trans.). In Plutarch's Lives (Vol. 8). Harvard University Press.

Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books.

Schön, D. A. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner: Toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions. Jossey-Bass.

Referências Teóricas e Concetuais do Ensaio Reflexivo

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