Are ethical lapses among America’s teen-agers becoming increasingly commonplace? A new survey of almost 30,000 high-schoolers, conducted by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, says so. The study found “alarming rates” of lying, cheating, and stealing among the nation’s adolescents. “There’s a hole in our moral ozone,” warned Josephson’s press release, “and it’s getting bigger.”
The report found a shocking 64 percent of teens had cheated on a test during the past year. Dishonesty plagues student relationships at school and at home: 65 percent of adolescents admitted they lied to a teacher about something important. Eighty-two percent lied to a parent. Outright criminal behavior was less common but still disturbing: Almost one-third of teens said they stole something from a store over the past year.
Adolescents demonstrate a startling disconnect between beliefs and behavior. Ninety-three percent of these same teens indicated they were “satisfied with their personal ethics and character.” Eighty-four percent agreed with the statement, “It’s not worth it to lie or cheat because it hurts your character.” Yet teens clearly engage in these behaviors anyway.
Why? Some say kids cheat because of unprecedented pressure to perform — to secure admission to high-ranking colleges, and to find employment in an increasingly competitive job market. Adherents of this view point to recent cheating scandals at top-performing schools, such as Chapel Hill High, as evidence that moral standards wilt when we turn up the heat.
Others fault technology. PDAs, cell phones, and MP3 players all can be put to nefarious purposes by students. The “scan and snack” method, outed by the Education Portal blog, highlights a particularly shrewd cheating strategy for those skilled in high-tech wizardry: Students peel a label from a soda bottle or snack, scan it into a computer, and then replace the nutrition facts with calorie-free, grade-boosting test answers.
Scanners and snackers can access step-by-step instructions on YouTube, which features more than 3,000 “how to cheat” videos, according to CBS News. The Internet is also a boon to uninspired scribes tempted to copy or purchase term papers. Thirty-six percent of teens in the Josephson survey said they had plagiarized from the Internet.
Educators are ramping up their efforts to squelch cheating. Many use online detection services such as Turnitin.com to check papers for plagiarism. School administrators, wise to the cheating potential of high-tech devices, are cracking down on what students can bring into exams. Honor codes are receiving renewed attention. In July, in the wake of Chapel Hill High’s cheating scandal, the district school board passed a comprehensive academic integrity policy.
Such school-based attempts to encourage honesty are necessary and good. So, too, are swift and decisive disciplinary measures when infractions occur. By themselves, however, these efforts are insufficient.
Here’s why: Kids don’t cheat at school because of their technological savvy. Nor do they choose the dishonest path just because they’re stressed out. They do it because they lack the integrity to stay true.
Ultimately, schools reap what we, as parents, sow. Cheating and lying are merely outward manifestations of an inner attitude of the heart — an attitude shaped primarily by the presence, or absence, of parental time, training, and care.
If, as parents, our particular brand of character is jarringly inauthentic, we should not be surprised when theirs is as well. The reverse is also true: If we model lives of decency and integrity, pairing admonition with action, then we give our children something to admire and emulate.
In the end, there’s a lot schools can and should do to deter dishonesty. But we would do well to acknowledge that parents, not schools, provide the moral scaffolding on which children construct a lifelong system of ethics. If the Josephson report tells American parents anything, it’s this: We have much left to do.
Kristen Blair is a North Carolina Education Alliance Fellow.