In this world, it has become so difficult to find people of integrity, folks who will look you straight in the eye and tell the truth. When asked for the truth, people hedge, they mumble, and when pressed, they out and out tell a lie. One does not have to look far to find this behavior.
Someone whom I admire a great deal, my son, recently told me that he sees a lack of ethical standards in today’s world. I can’t agree more. There is also a deficit of role models to exhibit exactly what ethical behavior might be. In colleges and universities, cheating has become more the norm than the exception. Failure to comply with deadlines and/or to do the work expected is another problem. Plagiarism on papers prevails. Things really have gone beyond the act of writing answers to test questions on the palm of one’s hand. Yet, every student, and every parent of that student, expects him/her to be given an “A” for the class.
This is a problem. Young people who get away with not doing their work in school will have a more difficult time succeeding in life. Yes, school should be work, and not just play, and it should be a lesson in preparedness for the “real world.”
I think back to my own experiences as an educator. I could not restrain myself from teaching to the best and the brightest. You know what I mean…there’s always a student who sits in the front row, devours every word the teacher says, asks questions, reads the assignments, and “can’t get enough” of the subject. I naturally gravitate toward that kind of learner.
In my opinion, in the interest of an “equal education for all,” a faulty concept, at best, we have sometimes asked teachers to spend more time on “the ne’er do wells” than on the kids who truly will make a difference, for others, in this life.
Parents are a child’s first role models. Teachers are the second set of adults to set standards and expectations. Beyond that, the keepers of society: the policemen, the city council, the attorneys, the doctors, the politicians…all have a duty to conduct themselves in a way as to be above reproach.
Yet, night after night, there is some lurid report of a public official who has solicited sex with a minor on the internet, or there is a tale told about yet another downright lie or misrepresentation committed by an elected or appointed official. It all amounts to scandal. The slate of candidates who aspire to sit in the Oval Office has many people who are not exactly “lily white,” from a moral standpoint and an exemplary one.
Where there is truth, there is meaning. Only through sincere interactions with others can we begin to bring any meaning to the table of our collective responsibility and our connectedness as human beings.
Personally, I have no patience with morally corrupt people who feel that they must lie, cheat, and steal to make it in this world.
As parents, and as the “older generation,” we should be trying to safeguard the morals of our children and we should help them to choose the right paths. Parents often leave this task up to teachers, and teachers often leave the task up to clerics. The input of everybody is needed when it comes to providing guidance to our young people. They are, after all, the hope of the world.
As Daniel Webster of New Hampshire once said, “There is nothing so powerful as the truth.” One could become despondent in considering the affairs of man. However, in my world, the lilacs are budding up and will soon bloom, the sun is shining, and Spring has finally arrived.
Pat
