Ethics leader sees thefts as disturbing

As a friend and fan of the Journal-World, I read with interest your editorial on the integrity issues revealed by the Josephson Institute study of high school students.

As the author of the report, I am pleased that you’ve called the issue to the attention of your readers.

Personally, I think the cheating problem is serious, but the fact that 30 percent of all high school students (in a sample of just under 30,000) stole something from a store in the past year is far more troubling and much harder to explain in terms of pressures on performance.

Though there is huge responsibility for the deterioration of ethics in the adult community, I think it’s dangerous to dismiss either the social or moral significance of the values and behavior patterns of young people simply by locating the blame elsewhere. I also would place greater emphasis on the responsibility and power of this generation to be better than their parents (as they are on environmental issues).

Since the report came out we received great response from the interviews, including hundreds of requests concerning the ethical behavior of adults. To provide helpful (though not scientifically valid) data on this question and to stimulate discussion on this important topic we’ve prepared an online survey. I think it would be instructive and provocative if your staff and readers were invited to take the test. All they have to do is click the link on the home page of charactercounts.org

I am working on now and will have up on our Web site soon a scoring/rating guide that will make the self-test even more interesting. We will send everyone that takes the survey a link to the scoring guide.