Moral Values

The preliminary results of the 2000 "Report Card on the Ethics of American Youth" are in and the results aren't encouraging. The survey is conducted every two years by the Josephson Instituteas part of it's "Character Counts" campaign. It boasts a small margin of error, only +/- 3 %. In 1998, 20,829 students (10,760 high school and 10,069 middle school students) answered the survey which asked questions about everything from relationships, to school habits, to theft and violence. The results then were shocking with 7 out of 10 students reporting that they had cheated on a test at least once in a 12 month period, and 73% admitting to lying repeatedly. Not much seems to have changed since that 1998 survey.
The 2000 preliminary results show some startling trends: * Cheating
71% of all high school students admit they cheated on an exam at least once in the past 12 months (45% said they did so two or more times).

* Lying
92% lied to their parents in the past 12 months (79% said they did so two or more times); 78% lied to a teacher (58% two or more times); more than one in four (27%) said they would lie to get a job.

* Stealing
40% of males and 30% of females say they stole something from a store in the past 12 months.

* Drunk at School
Nearly one in six (16%) say they have been drunk in school during the past year (9% said they were drunk two or more times).

* Propensity Toward Violence
68% say they hit someone because they were angry in the past year (46% did so at least twice), and nearly half (47%) said they could get a gun if they wanted to (for males: 60% say they could get a gun).
Are today's youth really in a state of moral decay? What do all these statistics mean? Well, for starters, they mean that something has to change! Attitudes like these are shocking in any age group but when they come from young people they are also heartbreaking. Aside from the fact that the attitudes shown by today's youth directly shape what the world