Youth Need Help In Developing Moral Compass

What are the odds your teenager cheated on a school test? Or lied to you or a teacher? Or hit someone? Or showed up drunk at school?

Odds are that your child did at least one of those unethical acts, according to a nationwide teen character study released this week.

Called “Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth,” the study looked at the behavior of 8,600 teens. Here are some of the findings:

Seven in 10 students surveyed admitted cheating on a test at least once in the past year.

Ninety-two percent said they lied to their parents in the past year; 78 percent said they had lied to a teacher.

Nearly one in six students said they had shown up for class drunk at least once in the past year.

Sixty-eight percent admitted they had hit someone because they were angry.

“This data reveals a hole in the moral ozone,” said Michael Josephson, founder and president of the Joseph and Edna Josephson Institute of Ethics in California, which commissioned the study. Two years ago, Josephson used almost identical words to describe similar results in a similar study.

If there’s any good news from the recent study, Josephson notes, it’s that the percentages may have peaked.

Good news? Marginally so, I would say, if you consider a moral victory to be that no more than 70 percent of students cheat rather than 75, 80 or 90 percent.

Whose fault is it for this state of student affairs?

Josephson avoids the blame game while urging parents, teachers and coaches to become more involved with young people.

“If all three were doing their best, we wouldn’t have this problem,” he says.

Perhaps, but they would still be up against:

A relativistic ethic, coursing through our culture for at least 30 years, that has undermined any authority greater than self for deciding matters of right and wrong.

Freedom of expression that is no longer simply a political right but personal permission for any and all behavior.

Consumerism that fuels a desire to want more and to have it now at the expense of self-discipline and frugality, seen as antiquated and naive.

To further debase positive values, our culture serves up obscene and misogynistic lyrics in pop music, lewd and extremely violent content in movies, and an almost nonchalant attitude toward life. And the list goes on and on.

Less than five years ago, such a litany would have been dismissed by a large segment of society as the rantings of cultural old fogies. But the times, they are a changin’. To be sure, not everyone is joining the chorus. Yet, the voices of those who believe they can make a positive difference are increasing:

The 7-year-old Character Counts Coalition (www.charactercounts.org/) a nonpartisan alliance of leading human service and educational organizations, is seeking to instill core values - trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship - in young people through various programs and organizations.

Coalition members believe that “adults and institutions have a duty to teach the young, in word and deed, that honesty is superior to lying, responsibility to dissolution, fairness to greed and caring to callousness.” Support for its work continues to grow.

The 3-year-old America’s Promise - The Alliance for Youth (www.americaspromise.org/) is hard at work building and strengthening the character of young people. Led by Gen. Colin Powell, the nonprofit organization is committed to five promises to young people: ongoing relationships with caring adults/parents, mentors, tutors or coaches; safe places with structured activities during nonschool hours; a healthy start and future; marketable skills through effective education; and opportunities to give back through community service.

Long-standing groups - Boys and Girls Clubs, YMCA, La Raza, 4-H, Little League, Scouting programs, to name a few - continue to be integral to the development of the moral integrity of young people.

And religious groups of every stripe are coming up with innovative ways to provide young people the moral foundation they’ll need to transform the culture they inherit.

All of these efforts depend on parents and other adults taking the lead in working with young people - setting positive examples, serving as mentors and counselors, seeking new ways to interact with them so they develop the moral compass needed to navigate in treacherous waters.

If you haven’t connected with one of the organizations I’ve mentioned, check out the opportunities they have to offer. Or seek out other groups.

At the very least, become involved in a positive way in the lives of young people. In the end, that’s how report cards change: one child, one adult working together.