Giving 101: The Princeton Class That Teaches Students to Be Less Selfish

Imagine walking along a road past a pond, when out of the corner of your eye you see a toddler boy flailing about in the water. You quickly look around. There is no other adult in sight. If you don’t jump in to save him, no one else will. He will drown. You know what you have to do. You dive right in and drag the drowning toddler from the water.

But what if that little child were drowning—proverbially—half a world away? What would you do to save him then?

This is one of many questions Peter Singer, an Australian professor of bioethics at Princeton University, asks undergraduates during his popular semester-long course on practical ethics. The lecture course covers euthanasia, animal rights, infanticide and abortion, effective altruism, and other weighty topics.

Singer puts a uniquely practical spin on how he gets his students to stretch their thinking. This semester,