Reading Lesson Plan

Have American teenagers lost moral values such as truth, hard work and honesty? That’s what statistics seem to indicate. According to a national poll of more than 20.000 middle school and high school students, sponsored by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, nearly half of all high schoolers are thieves. 47% of students admitted they stole something from a store in the past twelve months, and more than one in four said they have committed theft at least twice. The theft rate represents an 8% jump from the 1996 poll.
The same poll also revealed that almost all teens lie to their parents. 92% said they lied at least once in the past year. Furthermore, more than one in three students said they would lie to get a job. What’s more, 80% of the top students in the country have cheated in school exams, according to the last Who’s Who Among American High School Students annual survey-the highest percentage in the survey’s history.
Despite the high percentage of teenagers who admitted to lying, cheating and stealing, 91% of them reported they were “satisfied” with their characters and they had “ a good behaviour”!Most of them said, “it’s important to me that people trust me.” Were they being ironic? Also confusing is the fact that 46% of students in the Who’s Who survey warned that the biggest problem facing their feneration was “declining social and moral values” in the USA. Yet almost the same percentage did not admit that their own cheating in exams, stealing a,d lying were drimes, sayingthat cheating was “ no big deal”. “there is an incredible inconsistency in how teenagers think and how they behave, “ says Josephson. Ally Halloway, a 14- year old high schololer from New Jerey, claims she ois against lying and cheating, yet when it comes to getting a good mark, her moral values are soon forgotten, and she just copies her partner’s answers. “I try not to cheat and Itry not to lie,” she sayss, “but when you have to, you just do it.”
According to Who’s Who survey, more