The Nation's Pulse
Generation Cheat
Kids can be so cruel — and dishonest.
Most of us stole something as kids: a pack of gum from the supermarket, a toy car or doll of pocketable size from Wal-Mart, maybe a few quarters from our parents when they weren’t looking. My own sortie into criminal life was less glamorous, and definitely less rewarding. At 6-years-old, I swiped a plastic PVC pipe from the local hardware store. My dad didn’t buy the excuse that I planned to use the pipe to jumpstart a career in plumbing, but he did tan my backside for my trouble.
That taught me the age-old ethic of respect for the private property of others. By my seventh year of life, my stealing ways were ended thanks to parents who tempered my natural depravity with instruction. “Though shalt not steal,” says the Bible in both Old and New Testaments, and the principle has been foundational to civilizations since the dawn of time.
Too bad a growing number of American youth never learned it. According to a new report from the Los Angeles-based Josephson Institute for Youth Ethics, cheating, stealing, and lying are common pastimes for some youth. One-third of teenagers say they shoplifted in the past year, and about a quarter admit to stealing from parents, relatives, or friends during the same period.
The study, which surveyed the moral beliefs and conduct of almost 30,000 high school students, also found that most teenagers have an inflated view of their own virtue. Seventy-seven percent of respondents said they are “better than most people” when it comes to doing the right thing. That didn’t match the self-reported conduct of teens, which included 42 percent who said they sometimes lie to save money and 64 percent who said they cheated on a test at least once in the last year.
“It’s a hole in the moral ozone,” said Rich Jarc, executive director of the Josephson Institute. “These young people are going to become our future bankers, government officials, and business leaders.”
Of course, given current headlines, brushing up on lying, cheating, and stealing is probably a worthwhile pursuit for teens intending to join banking, government, or business (say, car manufacturing). The past few months have seen an unholy alliance of pseudo-capitalists and socialist politicians, the former grabbing for taxpayer money and the later eager to dish it out in exchange for unparalleled control of private industries. In that atmosphere, cooking the books or dolling out golden parachutes is not only tolerated but encouraged.
And while we’re at it, what’s wrong with filching a video game from Target when the Illinois governor almost got away with auctioning off Obama’s vacant Senate seat to the highest bidder?
I asked Jarc to pinpoint what influences kids to readily accept unethical behavior nowadays. “Some of the factors are the media, the need for parents to sometimes work multiple jobs, and a lot of single-parent households,” he said. “Then there is all the pressure that kids feel today to get ahead — a lot of exposure, pressure, and bad modeling.”
All true factors, but none get to the crux of the matter. Surveys
of this kind typically blame television, Facebook, little to no
parental involvement, lack of role models, and other cultural
factors. Few, if any, blame the government-controlled education
system. With relativism and pragmatism the chief ethical
philosophies taught in the public schools, and a social
atmosphere steeped in promiscuous sex, violence, and drugs, why
expect teens to have a solid moral compass?
The Josephson Institute found that teens in religious high schools were less likely than their public school counterparts to steal (although the numbers were still high). Home-educated students were not surveyed, but the results would probably have shown far lower rates of unethical behavior and beliefs since many of those students benefit from significant parental involvement, instruction in traditional ethics, and shielding from such unwholesome cultural influences as Britney and Paris.
Parents can try to be more involved by switching off the TV in
the evening or eating dinner as a family, but the influence is
negligible. Most teens spend half their waking hours under a form
of state instruction that considers traditional morality
unconstitutional. When not at school or doing homework, teens are
with their peers or engrossed in media, both of which reinforce
lackluster morals. Few parents are willing to do anything about
it.
That could mean a bleak future. It took on generation, the Baby Boomers, to upend the social fabric of America and pave the way for political, economic, and social disaster. Imagine how Western society will look when a generation with an atrophying moral conscience takes the reigns of power.
About the Author
David N. Bass is a journalist who writes from the Old North State. Follow him on Twitter.
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Brian| 12.15.08 @ 9:07AM
The problem is that anything taught by the parents at home, will be undermined by everything outside of the home.
Public schools do not teach morals, for fear of being judgemental old fogies. Public schools do not discipline children and allow the worst "students" to run classrooms.
Since the public is taxed to death to support public schools, most people are forced to send their children to these dens. Few parents are as rich as the Obamas, who like most Democrat politicians, laud public schools while sending their precious darlings to private schools.
Popular culture is full of pretty millionaires who have the talent of trained seals, the intellect of tree sloths and the morals of rutting boars. Utterly worthless people.
The 60s were four decades ago and the idiocies given birth during that time are still harming the country.
Patty R.| 12.15.08 @ 9:12AM
In-between the generations you mention--Boomers and today's youth (Gens X & Y) --is Generation Jones, born 1954-1965, between the Boomers and Generation X.
Google Generation Jones, and you'll find that many top commentators from many top publications and networks (New York Times, Time magazine, NBC, Newsweek, ABC, etc.) are using that term now, and specifically referring to Obama, born in 1961, as part of Generation Jones.
Stan redmond| 12.15.08 @ 11:55AM
Yeah, but they'll always vote for democrats so this is a good thing.
Appleby| 12.15.08 @ 12:11PM
While buying items for Samaritan's Purse (shoe box gifts to kids in REALLY poor circumstances), I was told by the check-out clerk who was in her 40s that she had reviewed the Angel Tree at Sears, where kiddies are encouraged to write their wishes on cut out angels and pin them to the tree for sympathetic strangers to perhaps grant.
She said that every one she looked at was a request for an iPhone, Nintendo Wii, specific brand of bicycle ($800+) or skateboard ($150-300), designer shoes ... even one request for a car! She said that her best gift when she was a child was a Barbie doll from the Fire Station Christmas Party in her neighbourhood. I told her mine was the year Daddy overruled Mama and I received a basketball. I am guessing that virtually none of these brats will get anything they DEMAND and that they will call this Racism.
Today's Generation Whine and their GrabbyBaby parents feel ENTITLED to DEMAND everything from material goods to the exact working conditions they MUST HAVE in order to allow me to hire them. (Specifically, they want my job. Today.)
I am seriously pleased that I will be retiring in the near future and can't wait to seee -- from Galt's Gulch -- what happens when Generation Whine runs smack dab head first into the cement wall that is Real Life.
dgdc| 12.15.08 @ 5:40PM
People are under a steady commercial assualt by society for the explicit purpose of generating demand. And predictably such focused efforts worked. These kids are exactly the way their parents and grandparents and great grand parents raised them to be.
If you think parents should spend more time with kids, vote for higher income taxes so that work is less renumerative. If you think the world is to commercial, vote for higher sales taxes so that the latest junk is too expensive. If you think that the media conveys a bad message, repeal the first amendment and set some bureaucrat in charge of it all.
"Kids" might be crass and materialistic but most of the "grown ups" are feckless whiners who don't want to accept the consequences of their choices.
DaveS| 12.15.08 @ 10:35PM
We teach, generally expect, and tolerate private vice and public virtue. Ergo, publicly held (especially in the government schools and even parochial schools) notions of the 'green' virtues hold great sway while the private virtues of personal responsibility are untreated, untouched and never criticized.
DaveS| 12.15.08 @ 10:38PM
P.S. the contributed comments of others are greatly appreciated for their genuine nature.
David Govett| 12.15.08 @ 11:23PM
Kids may be more dishonest, but at least there are more of them.
Michael L. Hauschild| 12.16.08 @ 7:42AM
For most of the last decade I taught in the field of "higher education" and therefore had to deal first hand with some of the most inventive cheating practices possible. It seems to be a cultural peer pressure phenomenon, many of the students actually expended more effort at cheating, with less results, then would be used by simply studying. Many of my fellow instructors facilitated the cheaters by exclusively using multiple-choice exams, randomly sequencing several exams with the questions in different orders, failing to "shuffle" seating during exams, and not using "cheat police" monitors.
Here are two sad tragic facts. Anonymous questionnaires given to the students show that forty three percent of them admitted to cheating. Worse, in my opinion, is that I taught one of the "pseudo" sciences (very little math involved), which meant that most of the undergrads were, due to degree stipulations, headed into the High Schools as educators.
Appleby| 12.16.08 @ 10:06AM
What really (and continually, since I was i n school myself) surprises me is that these brats believe that by steadfastly refusing to learn anything, they are cheating THE TEACHER.
The first day on the job when they realize that they can't vote PRESENT anymore, there is no book to look up the answer in, no text message lifeline available, no friend to phone ... that they are on the top of the hill with their own nekkid heinie bare to the breeze ... it has been, is and ever shall be borne in upon them that spending $50,000 of other peoples' money to be paid back with interest, with the steadfast intention of learning nothing, has not been a wise investment. And when they are fired from the job they obtained on false credentials, they will, of course, deem this to be racism.