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Students cheat, lie, steal, but say they're good

Our young people were taught well by Bill Clinton how to lie and cheat! "It depends on what "is" is!

This article is just on the tip of the iceberg of how the young have become very apathetic to law and order. Their adult parents don't socialize with their children at home or even know where they are most of the time. With first hand experience in a legal issue the young under oath and testifieing in court admit that it is okay to lie, cheat and steal. They say everybody does it, implying its a way of life for them. They are not being raised in a character building enviornment with morals or concern with right and wrong. Society and the legal system is responsible for how these children developed and achieved this irresponsible attitude. It is their way of life and what they have been trained to do. Peer groups have more authority over them than their parents have and throughout their educatiion years they have been allowed to run amock to lie, cheat, and steal without proper parental controls. Now society has a generation or two of adults that are brainwashed with an apathetic view of right and wrong.

64 percent cheating on a test seems low.

I teach at a secondary school and internet plagiarism is much higher than what was reported in the survey. Two years ago, it was about 50% in my classes (I teach at a Utah Valley school). In addressing the problem, I discovered that many students really believed that it wasn't wrong to copy directly from the internet because they hadn't been taught differently and they believed everything on the internet belongs to them. Shockingly, I discovered that a handful of parents didn't think anything was wrong with it either. After modifying my assignments to make plagiarizing more difficult (such as writing in 1st person rather than 3rd person) and teaching some ethics lessons, I have reduced plagiarism in my classes to about 15%. Those 15% of students don't really care if they cheat or not, but I'm still working on it.

While I agree that weak adult morality examples like Bill Clinton affect youth, there are plenty of others....too many Hollywood types, television characters, the internet and other politicians use poor judgment as well.

Good behavior examples for kids begin at home, church and school. Those three should be the areas of concentration.

[For those who may whine about my including the church, I therefore challenge you to thus concentrate on exposing your children to positive home and school environments.]

In the defense of youth behavior, earlier generations of adults throughout history have been concluding the "youth of today" will ruin the country and social structure with their behavior. Don't look now but we're still here.

Let's have some hope that our youth will mature responsibily.

That's a good idea! I usually make them write personal/community impact papers, but making them write in the 1st person will open up some more possibilities.

Thanks!

Oh... and cheating is the NORM. Dishonesty starts at home. They're just modeling what they've learned from their parents.

Punishing them is often not in my best interest as now I have to fight the student's attitude as well as the screaming parent defending her poor baby who didn't do nuthin'.

Josephson is 100% correct, adults are not taking this very seriously.

In fact, ADULTS ARE THE ROOT OF THIS PROBLEM, NOT THE CHILDREN.

Parents and teachers whine about how youth today don't respect authority, but look at them. They color their hair, apply age defying potions, get cosmetic surgery, buy clothes and even cars to make them appear younger, and refuse to act their age.

If adults don't respect the virtues of age, how can they expect children to?

History will remember Baby Boomers as the most inadequate generation of all time.

Look at the world today. From economics to ethics to the environment, to everything, on the BABY BOOMERS' WATCH, everything turned for the worse. Of course their children are worse as well.

Kids today are spending more time with television and the Internet than their parents, and the parents want it that way. They don't want to be bothered by parenting.

It will be up to those kids who had decent parents to not only make something of their lives, but to save the world from the wreck the baby boomers and their worthless progeny have left it in.

If that is even possible.

It all starts at home as well as schools. There should be time limits on the computer (also have computers out in the open to monitor what they're doing), cell phones, and more emphasis on school work. Schools need to bring back physical education, recess, and cut out some of the unnecessary school breaks. Both parties also should try to do their jobs as parents/teachers/administrators instead of being their friend. That's the real problem today. No one wants to accept responsibility for anything.

And if you want to talk politicians, put George W. Bush in there while you're at it.

. . . and then they arrive at college and finally the workforce. At some point it catches up with them because you can't cheat and be productive.

These number would even be higher if BYU students were polled.

These numbers would be higher if U of U students were polled. Even higher than BYU. I went to both schools, U of U as an undergrad and BYU as a grad student.

It's easy to say that it starts at home, but the reality is that social pressures outside of the home are overwhelming. I am a good parent who does all of the things recommended by people in these posts, but my daughter still struggles. Believe me, she has been taught, disciplined, and rewarded (for good behavior) such that she should be doing better. But, why isn't she? It's because she goes to school where her teachers accept mediocrity and allow literally 28 late assignments per school year. It's tough to teach responsibility, hard work, and ethics when no one else out there seems to care. School policies aren't helping matters, and parents can't do it alone -- even when they work their butts off (which I do!!) Society overall needs to be revamped - parents, schools, etc.

i was in the workforce many years before returning to school and i have to say that the workforce experience is the same---there is even encouragement for stealing others ideas and copying others processes when someone can find a successful prototype---i don't know how many times i have said we need to do it our way not theirs---i also don't know how many times the coworkers went home to kids and reinforced their own desires of copying others to their kids by saying this is how you do this---we need to change schools to reward thinking instead of compliance---we need to discover ways to graduate students based on knowledge, skills and maturity instead of age---we need to reward excellence and lead everybody toward it, while teaching altruism for the benefit of society---

64 percent are cheating in HS? Sounds like they are more prepared for college than ever.

I too worked hard in HS thinking that when I got to college it would pay off. Then I talked and listened to my fellow students at the U. I would say that around 64 percent would be accurate for college too.

In just ONE of my classes the guy next to me had his homework done by his wife, he shared those answers with those next to him, the guy behind just used copies of last years tests he got from his dorm mate and shared those. That was 2 out of 3 rows of students copying off each other. I didn�t out of principle and my grades suffered because I couldn�t keep up with the rest of the class and the teacher would slow down because the majority of students were doing so well so quickly. I was advised to get assistance from my fellow students who couldn�t explain anything to me because all they had were the answers, not the methods to devise them.

Its supprising how much you can bend it till it breaks though. I can back up rnoble that it happens in the workforce too, depending on the job of course.

I work in the financial sector and while I have seen few be dishonest with peoples finances I do see cheating from the company. Coworkers who "forget" frequently to punch out for lunch to get a free hour of overtime, or take an hour bathroom break when they know the new guys will work twice as hard without knowing better. And working the systems to inflate work numbers not only make the lazy employees look good but their managers as well.

I guess my generation was more fortunate. We had Richard Nixon for our example.

The Founding Fathers of this nation understood the importance of teaching morality to our youth, which is why the founding documents required that a public education system should be created, with a primary purpose of teaching children moral values out of the Bible.

Our renegade Supreme Court, in the 1950's, decided to legislate from the bench on this, and introduced a concept of "Separation of Church and State", and began forcing the removal of teaching morals out of the Bible from public schools.

Guess what. You remove the teaching of morals from the education of our youth, and then expect them to have morals?

Duh!

�Parents and teachers whine about how youth today don�t respect authority, but look at them. They color their hair, apply age defying potions, get cosmetic surgery, buy clothes and even cars to make them appear younger, and refuse to act their age.� Screen Age, 8:19 a.m. Dec 1, 2008

While I agree that values relating to cheating and all the rest are learned primarily at home, I�m not sure the things cited above are indicative of the problem. It�s more like parents cheating on taxes, padding insurance claim, bringing home supplies from work, speeding, sliding thru stop signs, using grandma�s handicapped tag to park in the handicapped space when grandma absent, not returning extra change in the grocery line, not speaking up if a cashier forgets to ring up an item. The details of honesty. We rationalize by saying it doesn�t matter, or nobody gets hurt, or it doesn�t cost anyone anything. But it does matter, someone does get hurt and there is a cost. Each generation lets �the little things� slide and the standard goes down over the years. So while schools and churches can help, ultimately the family needs to get better in order to stop the decline.

As a teacher I understand your frustration with teachers accepting late work, but the reality is that teachers are pressured by a large, loud, and growing group of parents to accept late work and mediocrity. We are subtly pressured by district officials and administrators to not give F grades and accept late work, even accepting late work into the next term. Programs such as advisory periods and study halls have taken more instructional time and have given it to students in order to make up their failing grades. Teachers in my school are lectured for giving too many F grades. What is really sad, is when half the school makes the honor roll at a 3.7 GPA--that is way too easy. I'm glad that you support consequences for your child, because many parents aren't that way. If more parents like you would complain to your district and principal about your concerns, then things would at least stop moving in the direction they are currently going. Schools are really a reflection of society and it will take society to change for the better in order for schools to improve. Please remember that most teachers are caught in the middle.

I really feel for the teachers who try, and aggree that this can be used as a reflexion of society as it is now and will be.

In fact it wasnt a week ago that my husband was looking at a large homemade candycane just out of curiousity and it slipped. It shattered on the floor and I talked him into hiding it behind the shelf. It only took him a minute before he went back and grabbed it. He decided to pay for his mistake and we took it to the cashier who also tried to talk him out of it twice, even when he explained the situation.

Looking back at it now, how bad off is our society that a little responsability is not only uncommon but strange.