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.
