New research shows that American teenagers are lying, stealing, and cheating at “alarming rates.”

For a long time now, people have lamented the state of younger generations. And for a long time now, they have been right. If this makes me sound like a fuddy-duddy who bemoans the spirit of the age simply because he long ago wedded his own, know that indicting the next generation implicates your own as well. After all, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.

But wherever that apple lies, a recent report indicates it is rotting. Breitbart.com reports on a Josephson Institute study of nearly 30,000 high school students which found that:

30 percent of students admitted to stealing from a store within the past year, a two percent rise from 2006. . . . 83 percent, of public school and private religious school students admitted to lying to their parents about something significant, compared to 78 percent for those attending independent non-religious schools. . . . 64 percent said they had cheated on a test, compared to 60 percent in 2006. And 38 percent said they had done so two or more times.

Moreover, these numbers understate the problem because, writes Breitbart, “. . . more than a fourth of the students (26 percent) admitted they had lied on at least one or two of the survey questions.”

In other words, they lied about their lying.

Then there are those who will lie to themselves about the kids’ lying. For instance, some say we’re now merely documenting what previously hid in the shadows. Then, this piece on the study included the following commentary by Mel Riddle of the National Association of Secondary School Principals:

The competition is greater, the pressures on kids have increased dramatically. They have opportunities their predecessors didn't have (to cheat). The temptation is greater. . . . We have to create situations where it's easy for kids to do the right things.

This all may be a riddle to Mr. Riddle, but he is part of the problem. First, doing the right thing has never been “easy” and that he believes we should try – or even could – make it so indicates that he hasn’t a clue about moral formation.

Think about it: what if I said I cheated on my wife because no one made it easy to be faithful? What if a politician said he took a bribe because no one made it easy to avoid malfeasance? How about a criminal saying he broke the law because no one made it easy to follow it? This is much as with anything else, like skills, for instance. If we can only do math, play music, or sink a basketball when the task is made easy, are we really good at those things? Likewise, if we only can do the right thing when it’s easy, we are not good.

The solution to dealing with temptation is to inculcate the young with virtue – meaning, proper moral habits (habits are hard to break) – so they will instinctively tend toward good.

Mr. Riddle also said, “We need to create classrooms where learning takes on more importance than having the right answer.”

If this pronouncement doesn’t have cliche status yet, it should. This philosophy has bred nonsense such as creative spelling (use your imagination – that’s what the kids are allowed to do), and Outcome-based Education, which, among other things, involves allowing an incorrect answer on a test if the student can tell you how he arrived at it (imagine this in the military, “Yes, sir, but here is why I threw the grenade the wrong way after pulling the pin.") But, newsflash for the Riddles of the world, we only can know that students are learning when they consistently provide the right answer.

Unfortunately, too many of our educators don’t know the right answer regarding morality or education, and they deserve creative paychecks followed by a creative promotion detailed on pink paper.

Really, what is occurring socially isn’t hard to understand. We have been experiencing a steady moral decline for many generations now, and it’s largely attributable to the characteristic spiritual disease of our time: moral relativism. Couple this with a lessening of external controls, and you have a recipe for disaster.

This is because right action is only possible if people are governed, either from the inside or the outside. And in modern times we have seen a weakening of both agencies (that is, with respect to authentic morality; there’s great pressure to be politically correct). We send people relativistic messages via mantras such as “That’s your truth; someone else’s may be different,” and “Who is to say what is right or wrong?” in the name of promoting things such as multiculturalism or tolerance, and then we’re surprised when they operate by the “Whatever works for you” principle.

So, believing morality is just a social construct and thus synonymous with opinion, instinct is the best yardstick for behavior relativists have. So they have poor internal governance. At the same time, accountability is lax, with time-outs and rehabilitation supplanting that awful, anachronistic thing, punishment. So there is poor external governance.

What does this all add up to? Unless you’re steeped in the new math, it’s a simple equation.

One thing we are succeeding in instilling people with, however, is self-esteem. Breitbart reports that despite their profound personal corruption, “93 percent of students indicated satisfaction with their own character and ethics, with 77 percent saying that ‘when it comes to doing what is right, I am better than most people I know.’”

Is this any surprise? Relativists have only personal morality, that yardstick of instinct that determines their values; this means their values are just a reflection of themselves, of their likes and dislikes. And no one will measure up to that yardstick perfectly except for the little god in the mirror – the one who must lie, cheat and steal to succeed.

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archtoplee said:

moral relativism I agree with you, Mr Duke, and I know a cure. Close down those public schools! In my father's generation a principle could have risked being tarred and feathered for saying stupid things like Mel Riddle. Teenagers will get the message that relative to their lies and cheating is the consequences of having to go out and work for a living. That is if the parents and the school principles stop acting like fools. Teenagers aren't stupid. They know how to manipulate their parents, especially the ones that run to their child's defense even when their child is caught cheating and stealing. "Oh, my, oh my don't you dare touch my child. Don't you dare lay a finger on my little angel." Those are the kinds of parents who the Bible says must "hate" their child for they dare not spank their little bottoms at a time in that child's life when the spanking would have done some good. Now that they are teenagers the problem is left up to someone else to fix. It would have been easier for everyone concerned to not have "spared the rod" and gotten more familiar with the Good Book and thrown Dr Spock's Baby books in the trash. Not all children need the rod and some are fast learners when the rod is applied! I learned very quickly. However, all children need to learn right from wrong and there is no better authority than the Bible for that sort of instruction. Now, I suppose we'll hear from the atheists that the Bible is a fairy tale. But even these folks can't deny the fact that when the Bible was in the public schools the problems with discipline, cheating, lying was dealt with immediately. Public school kids turning guns on their fellow class mates was something unheard before the "Modernists" kicked tradition out of the government schools and put in the namby pamby types like the Riddles in charge of your child's education.

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December 04, 2008
Votes: +4

GodsPlan4TheChildren said:

SAVE OUR FAMILIES AND PROTECT OUR CHILDREN---URGENT MATTER---CORRUPTION IN CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES We have a very serious issue here. Child Protective Services in every state is destroying families and children lives. We The People need to make a stand and stop the corruption in Child Protective Services. Our children are our future. They are being kidnapped,drugged and placed within the foster-care system for government social security funds, grants,and incentive bonuses. Studies reveal that children are 11 times more likely to be abused in state care than they are in their own homes, and 7 times more likely to die as a result of abuse in the foster care system. 1,111 children die each year as a result of child abuse, more than half of which occur after CPS takes custody. For each child removed from an abusive home, SEVENTEEN were stolen for no good reason at all

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December 05, 2008 | url
Votes: +7

Pat Henry said:

Schaeffer, being dead yet speaketh Francis Schaeffer's trilogy (beginning with The God Who Is There) and subsequent works marked the problem, stemming in liberal theology over a century ago. The effects were traceable in the 60s, and, as he predicted, they continue apace. Philosophy seems academic to some, but first questions are answered, whether consciously examined or not. "How Should We Then Live?", now remastered on DVD with pdf study guides is still an excellent small group study.

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December 06, 2008
Votes: +0

RichardR369 said:

	Government Schools It's amazing what they're actually teaching in government schools instead of what they 'say' they're teaching in government schools.
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December 06, 2008
Votes: +3

James Warren said:

	Mr "Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools" That's God message to our public schools
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December 08, 2008
Votes: +1

Isaac said:

Public Schools I really have to wonder how many of the people on this cite have any real experience with public schools. You seem to think there so inept, and what not... I for one went to public school all the way through and had many quality teachers. Maybe I just got lucky to grow up in a good school district, but what ever the case, you can blame the educational problems of this country on the concept of public education. And what I ask would you propose as a solution? You would shut down public schools, and have a backward uneducated populace? Wasn't it said that democracy needs a well educated populace to function. How would getting rid of public schools improve the critical thinking of the populace? Not every parent can afford to send their kids to private schools, and the private school system could never absorb all the students in the public system even if parents could afford it. I think people see the worst cases of bad public schools and then think that they are all bad, but this is clear stereotyping. How about getting people more involved in the public school system to improve it on a grassroots level? Clearly people need to be personally involved in their kids education. And the idea that turning all education over to the private sector will fix education is just as ludicrous as believing that the government will do it all. We have to be personally involved, that is the solution.

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December 08, 2008
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Peter Steele said:

RE: Public schools Due to aethiest Madalyn O'Hair Murray, the Supreme Court banned religious instruction and Bibles in Public Schools in 1963 the year that my Church, The Greenwich Baptist Church was founded. Karl Marx in his Communist Manifesto called for a free public instruction as my late father said in 1956 and 1970. It's coming out in my book if I can get it published and Dewey the Socialist did not help matters either. Peter F. Steele

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December 09, 2008
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